Keeping the Old
by createandconstruct
Summary: "Whatever sick fears were brewing he needed to wash them out now, because this was Riverdale, and whatever twisted horrible stories floated by on the news as he moved through the house, did not happen here." Archie clings to what he knows, a difficult task as his best friend has suddenly gone missing in a town that seems, very recently, to favor the unknown.
1. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Chapter 1

 _Out of Sight, Out of Mind_

The darkness shifted from his eyes as Archie blinked himself awake. A sigh was released and with a lethargic shift he moved his left arm that been jammed between his pillow and head, leaving a dizzying ache in its bone. He had promised himself he wouldn't do this again, but the usual routine of starting homework on the bed usually led to an unfortunate fate of dozing off. His textbook lay beside his head with his phone placed in the middle slit; with a groan he reached to check its time. The phone stayed frustratingly black despite Archie's pressing attempts. If the dead phone was any indication, he had taken more than a quick study break.

With a push from his sleep-heavy arm, he peered down the bed for his laptop, immediately finding it in a near slipping position between the wall and comforter. He grabbed and flipped it open waiting the few seconds for the time to appear.

3:18 a.m.

Fantastic.

A written lab report and biology test, now three hours away in his future, and he had done absolutely nothing. _Again_. He had taken the necessary steps to avoid this! His book, laptop, notes, everything had been laid out as he had settled down, steering himself for the work. Yet somehow, he was now stuck in the middle of a Wedne- no, Thursday morning, exactly where he started. How many late night homework sessions would it take until he finally got the message to get his shit together?

How many times did he have to _fuck up_ before he got his shit together?

Archie felt new sweat layering onto his face and neck as his mind wandered, and _god_ , no. He was done with thinking about things that were over. It was a stupid biology assignment, not another life splintering mistake made in the heat of the summer. He had control. His life was not going to end from a late high school lab report.

His mind slowed and the sweat lightened as he grabbed at the textbook, pulling out his phone to plug it into the laptop. Reasoning himself to a sense of security he waited for the device to flash on. At the very least, he could finish this assignment in the next hour and then, push in a quick study session with Jughead in the short time before class.

Archie felt himself hit an uncomfortable mental bump as the real frustration of the situation came to light.

Why hadn't Jughead woken him up?

The lamp still burning in the room, Archie lying dead to the world in that day's full outfit, and the textbook and laptop circling his curled position. Jughead would've been able to see that Archie had unintentionally passed out by simply walking into the bedroom.

Pushing the laptop and phone from his legs, Archie stood and took notice of the now obvious Jughead-void in his room. The mattress at the foot of his bed lay untouched from the night before.

The strangeness of Jughead's absence was suddenly clear as Archie remembered a new and repeated offense that had been happening as of late: Jughead had fallen asleep on the couch. _Again_.

Archie let out a breathy chuckle as he began to move downstairs to his lug of a friend. A real pair they were. His dad was out at the site working late and the two of them had taken his watchful eye for granted as no one remained to wake the other up. At least, now he wouldn't be pulling an all-nighter alone.

He rounded down the last steps of the stairs and crossed through the kitchen. He gave an insincere shout that broke into a laughing call as he walked towards the back of the couch.

"Jug! It's three in the morning, you fell asleep on the couch again!"

With a hand on the couch's cushion he peered expectantly over to see his friend collapsed. Archie's mouth pulled upwards at the unavoidable grumpiness that he was sure to endure.

Until he found himself faltering, at the change of plans, as his eyes met with only unoccupied cushions.

Okay… so Jug wasn't on the couch, and… had never come into Archie's room, and now, apparently, by the silence left after his call, had never come home?

Was he pissed about something? Things had finally begun to feel right again between them since their "talk". They were beginning to feel like "Archie and Jughead" again. And he was absolutely sure he was not experiencing a fault in his memory, since the last he recalled of his friend was a cheerful goodbye after their brief chat with Betty at the Blue and Gold.

Betty.

The name suddenly made something click and he slowed his walk from the couch. His face festered an uncomfortable heat while he could almost feel the rope pulling down the drop in his stomach. He wouldn't have expected it of his friend, but recently he found that things he didn't expect were happening too often for his liking.

Apparently Jughead staying over Betty's was one of those _things_.

It wasn't painful, just different, and… distant? They were off doing whatever and he was left to wander the house, alone, searching for one part of a new pair, which had belonged to their original trio.

Jug had probably sent off a courtesy text to him for the night (one which he had missed during his sleep), but there was still a heaviness around this entire situation.

As Jughead and Betty moved forward with whatever they were doing Archie couldn't help but feel as though he was always moving three steps back. It wasn't really his business, but somehow he felt like he had missed the memo that his two friends had moved on without him. That they _could_ move one without him. He wasn't a staple piece in their lives and if he was honest with himself he probably didn't deserve to be.

Returning to his room, Archie shrugged off his jeans and replaced them for a pair of loose checkered pajama bottoms. The noticeable chill of autumn had finally settled in the house.

The laptop screen lay open with another irritating black screen and automatically he swiped his fingers at the pad of his computer.

3:36 a.m.

Suddenly, the idea of finishing an untouched writing assignment was unrealistic by himself. It seemed that sleep would be winning over a possible low grade and any lecture he would be receiving tomorrow.

Pushing the now worthless biology textbook to the floor and crawling into his place in the bed, Archie grabbed his phone to check for the waiting message Jughead had probably sent him hours ago.

With a click he checked if his phone had powered back on. The incredibly too bright screen glowed and his original guess was confirmed as he noticed the "JUG" titled box that lay on the screen.

 _Hey gigolo, headed back from Pop's. You down for burgers tonight?_

An unnatural calm before a storm was settling around Archie. In whatever scenario he thought was playing out, this was not in the script.

Archie moved to the time of delivery.

11:32 p.m.

Jughead had started heading home... four hours ago.

Something froze inside Archie. A thick cover of dread draped around him and began to seep in. His breath was stolen and he was stuck, frigid, over a single thought that had loomed as something possible, but never realistic.

Jughead had been heading home and he never made it.

No, this. Was. Not. Happening.

Whatever sick fears were brewing he needed to wash them out _now_ , because this was Riverdale, and whatever twisted horrible stories floated by on the news as he moved through the house, did not happen here. He swiped open his phone and mindlessly clicked to call Jughead. The freezing had broken and was now replaced with a deep internal pounding that was pushing him close to the edge of panic. He could feel himself dangling- and if Jughead would just _pick up_ his phone he'd be saved from falling into the scenario his mind was building; reaffirm the insanity in whatever Archie thought was happening.

Except Jughead didn't pick up, and Archie fell.

The sanity in this new scenario hit and Archie found himself remembering that these things did happen here. The Riverdale he found himself in was one where the unknown was commonplace. This Riverdale was one where something so shattering and so bad could now happen. And it could happen to anyone.

The pounding had now pushed up his veins and into his throat as he pressed his thumb to the phone to call Jughead for a third time.

This was a Riverdale where it only took a summer to lose control of himself, where every family had someone to hurt and something to hide, where kids who laughed and lived and stood so much alive one moment were broken, tortured, and killed the next – and it was the same one where Jughead didn't pick up his _fucking_ phone.

Now on a fourth call and still Jughead was silent. What the hell was going on?

The ringing of the fourth reached the end and Archie found himself speaking for a voicemail that would probably do him no good.

"Dude! It's Archie, what the hell is going on, it's like…" His eyes blink up towards the laptop screen to find it mocking him with a dark nothing. "It's almost four, Jug... in the morning! Can you answer your phone and tell me where the hell you are!"

A seething hiss of anger shot in at the end as he stopped the message. Whether it was directed at Jughead or himself he didn't know, and he really doesn't care. He peers at his phone, 3:58 a.m. it reads, and Archie thinks he's going to be sick.

He sends off a few curt texts to Jughead of the " _pick up!_ " variety and immediately begins to search for a lifeline from his panic.

He could call his dad, at least there would be some comfort in that, but he would probably have less of an idea where Jughead would be.

There is a skip in Archie's pounding anxiety as his mind shifts to consider that, even now, he, Jughead Jones's best friend – self-proclaimed brother - still was almost as proficient in the "what's up with Jughead" department as his dad. A hole breaks into his chest and mixes with his rising nausea.

But, if there was someone who knew Jughead best right now, someone who knew where he could be, only one person would ever come to mind; an image of blonde and pink.

Before Archie could feel a twinge of anything at that thought he was immediately switching his call to Betty.

From the theme of silent calls he was taken aback when she picked up.

Her voice was heavy, irritated, and entirely too close to the phone. "Archie if you're calling for help with biology I swear yo-"

"Is Jughead with you?" It blows out of him so quickly that he hardly has a breath to hold as he waits for her answer.

There's a pause and he almost glances to his window to find her face riddled with confusion across the way.

"Juggie? No, he's not here." She's quick and knows him too well, he can tell she's picked up on the unease from his side. "Why would he be?"

Her questions are clear and they only help to build the overflowing panic he is drowning in. Maybe calling Betty was a mistake. He wishes he had just let her sleep instead of spreading this discomfort to someone else. He should have called his dad.

"Archie, Jughead went home hours ago, what's going on?" There was now a firmness in her voice and this time he does look through his window to see a light pouring from her room.

"Betts, he texted me maybe five hours ago that he was coming home. I was asleep and missed it." He nervously rattles off to her. "Did he tell you where he was going after Pop's?"

There's silence and Archie is now aware that the pounding has returned. "Bet-"

"Archie you need to call him, I'm getting dressed." Her voice is dry and cuts through the phone so quickly he nearly misses it.

"What?" He sputters, "Betty? I already called him! A bunch of times! That's why I'm calling you!"

"Archie!" Her voice cracks, and Archie thinks he may puke and burst all at once because she's scared and god, if Betty is scared... "My mom picked me up from Pop's at eleven. Jughead was walking straight home with dinner for you two when I left. Archie. Get. Dressed."

He is twisting into his jeans before she can fully deliver the command. The phone is ripped from its cord, pulling the blackened laptop to the floor as Archie barrels through the room, ripping down the stairs, and out of the house into the night.

* * *

 _Honestly never thought my first fanfiction ever would be an Archie Andrews centered story. Someone call middle school me and tell her not to throw away her collection of Archie comics; I'll never escape this series..._

 _I originally wrote this to fit after episode 9, but it can fit after 10 (at least until 11 airs and destroys whatever canon this story had)_

 _Hope you all enjoyed the first chapter, any feedback is appreciated!_


	2. Time Waits for No Man

Chapter 2

 _Time Waits for No Man_

At one point Archie swore he had been bursting through his front door, eyes diving straight into the dark of the night. Now, he realized, there had been a slip in direction he was obviously missing.

His feet were failing him, moving awkwardly through the air as he was left to face up into a speckled sky. Speckles that were tipping down and blurring out of sight before the image barely grazed any meaning for him.

The floating sensation was suddenly halted with an aching slam and continuing crumble down a jagged slide. Or more accurately, his front steps, which Archie recognized from the repeated strikes to the back.

His fall had been as graceful as it was quick and it left him sprawled on the cement with a throbbing ache in his back.

A typical _Archie Andrew's performance_.

Archie could almost see the dizzying stars dance around his head – his eyes squeezed shut to push the image away. Reaching out to nurse his now bruising back he found his focus returning. Still he felt lost, or like he was still waiting for an unexpected landing.

A cold, wet, _something_ was clawing into his legs from the ground, and even with the clarity of his vision the stars from his tumble were still daintily skirting by.

Whatever sick play Archie had unknowingly earned a part in was hell-bent on delivering the worst possible ending.

He was being covered in snow.

Not only covered but he was basically swimming in it.

A sharp breath escaped from his clenched jaw as he pushed himself upright.

Was snow always this _cold_?! He was going to be freezing his ass off all night! Not to mention he hadn't even thought to grab his jacket in his rush because he'd been freaking out about-

The frozen time had suddenly shifted him forward and Archie was back in the present. The soreness and cold that had been holding him down was numbed as a unique and twisted chill coiled around his spine.

" _Shit_!" he hissed.

 _What was he doing?!_

 _Who cared about his back?_

 _Who cared about his jacket?_

He didn't have _time_ for himself right now.

He shot himself onto the sidewalk, darting his head around, searching for whatever it was he was supposed to do next. The icy silence was now ripping into him as his eyes focused between the street lamps across the way – he was jostled from the view by a crunch in the snow.

"-chie!"

A whip to his left gave way to a familiar voice, but also an unfamiliar fury.

"I was calling you! I saw you fall down the steps- god, are you okay? You didn't answer me! I-.. I thought you were hurt! You could have a concussion, I shou-"

"Betty, I'm fine" he soothed, finding his usual composure.

Betty brought with her a warmth and safety that he could revel in. She was his force of calm.

"I just slipped… Didn't know it was snowing."

"It wasn't supposed to." she quipped.

 _Among other things._

Time was definitely moving too slow. Maybe he did have a concussion.

"You haven't heard anything from him?" Betty asked, interrupting his wandering thought as she pulled out the blinding glow of her phone. "His phone is still ringing meaning it hasn't powered down yet."

"Yeah, it's been ringing for me too."

"When you called?"

"Yeah. Each time. It rang."

It was like they were pushing something at bay. The white forming around his feet was painting an uncomfortable peace that Archie knew was too fragile to last. As soon as he was forced to voice the fear brewing nearby he knew this façade of calm would collapse.

"What time did he message you?" Betty's question softly ended the stuttering of his thoughts, helping him to flow away from the paralysis that was creeping inside.

"Around eleven thirty" he paused considering the vague time line he had begun to catalogue. "You said you left with your mom at eleven right?"

The falling flurries were more responsive as they slid by his cheeks; Betty was furrowing her brow at her phone.

"Betty did yo-"

"What?" Betty interrupted almost jumping as if she had forgotten his presence for a moment. "Sorry, you were saying something?"

"No, I just." What was he saying? "Right, yeah. I wanted to ask. You said your mom drove you home?" He questioned, remembering her hurried words over their call.

 _Didn't you say Jughead was leaving Pop's at eleven? Why did he text me thirty minutes later?_

There were questions and confusion bubbling into Archie's attempted understanding of Jughead's disappearance. He unsuccessfully tried to hold his tongue before pressing Betty with a questioning accusation.

Too late.

"Why didn't Jug just go home with you?" he lamely muttered.

Archie figured Betty would turn defensive not deflate.

"He was waiting for food" she tightly broke in. "He probably texted you once it was ready. I mean, I left at eleven, and my mom… she was going to wait."

Archie wasn't entirely sure if she was talking to him anymore.

"But, they got his order wrong" She winced. "He had to wait again and it was late, so he told us he'd walk home – that we didn't have to wait for him. It wasn't a problem, but he just worries too much and my mom she didn't argue it when he insisted – so I just – I just told him to text me when he got home…"

She was shivering.

"Betty."

"I should have made him come with us." She heaved up the words, and Archie almost thought she was going to be sick from them.

"Enacted my girlfriend authority or whatever Veronica calls it – told him we _would_ wait – or that it was going to snow – that he shouldn't walk home…"

Not shivering. Trembling.

"Betty. You didn't know it was supposed to snow."

" _I should have_."

Betty was barely a foot away from him, yet he could hardly make out the white of her eyes from his side of this expanding abyss which grew full of things he didn't know.

Things that obviously went deeper than snow.

"He never texted me Archie."

The cold was slicing into him with just a small breeze. Betty truly shivered this time and curled around her phone which had grown dark in her hands. He desperately wanted to offer something, give her a comfort that he was still finding through her.

"Wait."

He grasped the only lifeline available.

"Maybe he's still at Pop's?" He delivered, with a note of hope, watching for Betty's judgment on the idea.

"Arch, Jughead left the diner. We don't have tim-"

"Just listen" he stopped her counter before it could become concrete. "Maybe he stayed back to write, he always puts everything else on hold when he's got some kind of idea."

Her face scrunched slightly. "Jughead would have told me he was staying." She gestured to her phone.

"Yeah but… We should at least start there," he ended weakly. His idea was slowly losing what little momentum it had started with. He searched for another starting point.

"The only other place I can think of is his dad's" Betty offered.

Archie's neck jerked at that.

"I tried calling his dad…" She nervously tugged her top lip. "No answer," she nervously bit out and he felt himself sag back onto his own idea.

"So, Pop's first?" Archie was growing anxious, waiting for her to cement his plan.

"Archie." Betty's eyes raised from her darkened phone as it was buried into her coat pocket. Finally she was looking at him.

He was suddenly aware of how far away he was moving, or maybe of how slow everything was moving, or maybe of how overpowering the image of her was.

He was back to that night. He was back with Betty and her red eyes, leaking tears, bobbing throat, tousled hair, and absolutely firmness as she sought the truth.

No matter the damage it would cause her. No matter the damage he caused her.

Betty had always been stronger than him, she never dodged the truth, instead diving straight for it. Where he had been cowering, disconnecting, and fearing, she was thinking, planning, and already reasoning together the clues Jughead had left behind.

Betty was no longer pushing back the fears he was desperately fighting to keep away, and she was ready to throw reality at him.

He didn't want it.

"I-"He began. A final attempt to hold back the dam.

He was wasn't ready when she wiped it away.

"I know. I just know something _happened_ to him, Archie."

"You don't – You don't know that Betty."

"I do!" she nearly spit at him. "And I know we've been wasting time here while Jughead is out _there_! It's not safe and he's out there, I know it!" her voice broke and her arms quaked by her sides.

"Then let's go – let's just go to Pop's. We can just start with Pop's." Archie was spiraling down with whatever hell Betty had washed over him. His arms clutched around himself waiting for her to commit to his plan.

It was his final sliver of naivety. A guarantee to an ideal answer. Even now Archie's need for that quick, happy, and painless ending was suffocating. The kind of ending that left Jughead safely tucked inside a warmly lit booth at Pop's, typing away, with no awareness of time, until they would burst in and collapse into his seat. Choking him with an uncomfortable amount of relief that would make the crippling fear of moments ago feel mysteriously out of place and laughably wrong in the haven of their town.

As a snowflake blinked into his right eye, that perfect ending became harder and harder to see.

"Okay, fine." She agreed, but the doubt of his scenario was painted clearly in her eyes. Not that he could blame her. "But. If Jughead's not there. I don't care, we're calling Sheriff Keller."

Archie's half believable fantasy was now becoming a miracle only possible through prayer.

"My mom isn't home. She took the car." Betty announced tying up her noticeably stringy hair.

"Same here. My dad took the truck to the site, and my mom's staying at some motel."

He found himself backtracking at the mention of his dad.

"Alright then, we'll have to walk." She stated, shoving her hands into her thick pockets as she fully took him in. Her eyes softened as they wandered to his shoulder. "Archie, it's freezing, you need a coat."

Her offer was sincere but her position looked ready to break into a sprint.

He pulled his phone out and opened a new message.

"I'm fine Betty. I've wasted enough time already, let's go"

She didn't even try to argue, her ponytail already whipping away from him. He rushed after to close the gap between them as she faded from the street light's glow.

He turned to his phone. A thirty percent battery and text box sat on his screen.

 _Dad, going to Pop's with Betty. Looking for Jug._

The message was sent off as he turned attention to the road before him, now layering with a thicker blanket of white. The weight of passing time pressed down as the earlier light snow now fell as a heavy and quickening wave.

If Betty let out a protest as he yanked her arm forward with a harsh speed, he certainly didn't hear it.

* * *

A fluorescent glow rested over them turning Betty's face a shade of pink above exhaustion. The familiar light of Pop's windows was bleeding into every color around him as it painfully bounced off the white covering of the ground, nearly blinding him.

They had arrived to the first, or god-willing, last stop, yet Archie could hardly pull his torso up from its heaving position above his knees. The last time he felt a burn like this was during a three-mile run he never prepared for at the start of this year's football season.

Though that run did not include a barely breathable temperature in the air. Not to mention a painful slap of cold that was almost becoming comfortably numb in his cheeks.

He was going to move, they were going to go in. He just needed a second to _breathe_. A second Betty immediately rejected as she grabbed his sleeve into a tight knot.

Betty hardly seemed phased by their finished marathon, her breathing was barely a hiss compared to his monstrous pants.

Archie wondered if the fluorescent tubes nearby were entirely responsible for all the pink of her cheeks.

Veronica often complained how Cheryl worked the Vixens to the bone, and as Betty pulled him along to the diner's entrance with an almost inhumanly not-Betty Copper strength, Archie made a note to be more sympathetic towards Veronica's future complaints.

The soft vision of black lace blew away as a burst of warmth poured into him with the opening of the glass door.

"Jughead?" Betty voice called out over the nostalgic jingle of a bell.

A couple seated at the counter peered over their shoulders at the new arrival and an older bearded man barely raised a brow as he sipped his steaming drink in the window booth to Archie's left.

Besides them, the diner was empty.

"Jug?" Betty called again, as she made her way along the wall of cushioned seats. But Archie knew. He already knew.

Jughead wasn't here.

He was still panting, or had started panting. He knew the scene of Pop's so well, but right now everything in the room was foreign to him. Betty was miles away, frozen under the red tint of another fluorescent sign. DINER it read in Archie's memory, though it was only a melting blob of color to his eyes as it bled onto the girl below.

 _Jug wasn't here. Betty was right. He had left. Betty was right_

Archie knew. He was holding onto something fragile, but he knew.

Why would it be so _easy_?

The mass of red and girl was moving towards him, but Archie couldn't look at it, he couldn't answer it.

The refreshing cold of a counter rested against his palms as he pleaded for someone to end the spinning in his head.

An itching movement was growing in his pocket, a pressure was laying on his shoulders, and a heavy voice was sounding off nearby. He reigned focus to his thumb on the counter, the shuddering rupture of his breath, a memory of relief.

" _To be discussed."_

He closed his eyes.

" _Over many burgers, and many days."_

Somehow it didn't feel like those days would come.

* * *

Author Note:

Whew boy! Sorry this chapter came a little slower than I expected. My semester is coming to a close and I kept falling asleep while editing this, but through the power of the Twin Peaks soundtrack and procrastination of school work I finally finished it!

Hopefully I was able to capture the denial and panic Archie was feeling. As an older sister there's always been times where my kid sister went missing and the first reaction I always had was: "she's fine." Though I have to admit that deep down I was always pushing down panic that it would be the one time where she wouldn't be. So, that was a big inspiration in this chapter, hopefully I portrayed that well (not to mention Archie's drunken panic attack in episode 10 also really pushed me towards that feeling and direction).

Hope you enjoyed 3


	3. Falling on Deaf Ears

Chapter 3

 _Falling on Deaf Ears_

"Archie, when something like this happens you tell me. Preferably before you go running off – _to God knows where_ – in the middle of the night."

"I know. I know that … I'm _sorry_."

A sigh shuddered from Archie's phone, painting the exasperated face of Fred Andrews across Archie's flat-lining mind.

His elbows strained against the hard surface of the table, while the weight of his forehead pushed against the rough skin of his palm, creating the closest sense of clarity he could muster. The other hand gripped tightly around his cellphone as he tried to follow the distressing tone of his father.

It was hard to focus. Harder to think.

A low buzz was vibrating across his skin. A persistent itch that reminded him of a mosquito bite. The feeling was faint and dismissible, maybe a small satisfaction would be felt from dragging nails across the abrasion. Soon, without realization, the sensation – the remaining memory of something invading the flesh – would become a repetitive and distracting pulse. The mind would build the act of scratching as a forbidden sin that rewarded the ultimate pleasure of clawing against a bump for blood to be drawn.

As the ashes of panic flickered around the charred remains of his mind, Archie found himself lusting after that sin.

If his hands were empty he may have ripped himself apart. Found the core of his trembling, dug his fingers into it, torn a gaping hole, and stopped the aftershocks that continued to shudder through him, blurring his mind and melting his thoughts together.

Perhaps he should've been thankful that the earthquake he had just experienced hadn't completely crippled him.

When Betty had ripped the vibrating phone from his back pocket, during his hysterical collapse minutes before, he could do nothing but wither into a mass of limbs over the counter as she provided the missing person's account to his dad. The hot blanket of fear had wrapped around him, numbing his senses and choking his thoughts, that even when Pop had carried Archie into a booth and coaxed him back to breathing he could only respond by flopping around like a corpse.

"Just breathe son," Pop's had soothed, gripping a steady hand to his shoulder. Archie wasn't sure if he had successfully returned a nod to those words as his sight phased through the white canvas of the man's apron; without the rough weighted palms holding him upright he may have followed the trail of his eyes to nothing. "You won't be of use to anyone when you're two seconds away from keeling over."

In his own personal chaos, Pop cleared the diner. Apparently removing its status of 24 hours for Archie to ride out his panic attack without an audience and to speak with Betty. Their voices had been floating nearby since she had decided to trust that Archie was coherent enough to hold a phone and work his jaw.

The sounds were soft – Betty's mumbling, Pop's hearty chords, his dad's commands, the buzzing of a flickering light nearby – they were just enough to keep him steady and pull him back from the brink.

"Archie?" His dad questioned. Archie pressed the phone flat against his ear.

"Yeah. Sorry, I'm here." He ran the hand at the edge of his brows up to hold the wisps of red hairs back against his scalp. "I'm just... I didn't hear you, sorry."

Archie forced himself to filter everything away, including the conversation nearby. Betty and Pop's voices, despite their reassuring presence, were invading his hearing. He was trying to give his dad as much attention as he could muster, but hushed words and quick glances his way were enough to keep pulling him from the conversation at hand.

Over the phone there was a faint slap of a car door and Archie angled himself to face the blinds over the window, away from the two speakers by the front register.

"I said that I need you and Betty to stay where you are," His dad repeated. "I know you're worried about Jughead, but if something did happen I cannot have you following the trail, you got that?"

Another slap outside the phone startled him and he peered to the side to see Betty's hand meeting the flat surface of the countertop with an urgency from her unheard words.

"This is not up for discussion Archie."

Archie closed his eyes and released a deep pocket of air from his nose. "I know dad. We just needed to check Pop's to be sure." His fingers became a stark white as his grip curled around the edges of his phone. "But Betty and I... we can't just go home."

A mutter of " _no's_ " seemed to be coming from his phone.

"And you can't be running through town in a snow storm at four in the morning either. You and Betty are waiting until I get there and then we'll handle this the right way."

A sudden blister of irritation was forming in his gut.

"And the right way is sitting around and wasting more time?" He snapped. "Dad I told you it's been _hours_ since Jughead messaged me, and Betty even said he never mentioned anything about going somewhere besides back to the house – we can't just wait around for Sheriff Keller to decide if this is an emergency or not, we already know it is!"

The anger was burning away the haze that had been fogging his senses.

He needed his dad to get it. Jughead was in trouble whether anyone believed it or not, and there was no one but Betty and him to lead the chase.

They were Jughead's friends, and if there was even a semblance of a job description to that title then it probably required Archie to do everything in his power to look for his friend when he was missing in a town loitering with murderers. Waiting in a cushioned safety net for his dad to drive across town or for Sheriff Keller to slowly don his hat with muttered annoyance that the Jones boy had caused another commotion was exactly what he shouldn't be doing. Having a panic attack and grasping for false security was not an option either, he needed to pull himself together for Jughead. Hell, for _Betty_ , who been drowning under Archie's useless state all night.

He was supposed to be their friend not some sorry-sack that dragged them into his own pathetic oblivion.

There was a pause across the phone and Archie could hear the familiar moaning start of a truck's engine. "Archie, I'm not saying this isn't serious, we just need to do what keeps _everyone_ safe."

"You mean keep _me_ safe. Not Jughead," He hissed.

That must have struck a nerve and Archie could hear the sharp inhale of breath before the impeding scold of...

"Arch!"

The shout jostled the phone from his fingers and onto the table. He hadn't expected his name to blare into his ear, or for it to sound from around the phone.

Betty stood before him hands pressed over the table with her entire weight leaning towards him.

"Sorry!" She scrambled for his phone which had landed by her thumb before handing it back to him. "Can I talk to you for a second, Pop just-"she swallowed whipping her ponytail to glance at the heavyset man walking their way.

"We might have an idea of where Jughead went."

Archie froze in his movement to reposition his phone.

" _What?!_ "

A nervous smile painted his friend's face as she grabbed for his sleeve, seemingly holding herself back from bursting, before he was ready to hear the news.

"Wait- hold on… let me just." He began shifting from the center of the seat to the diner floor, but was careful to keep the cell phone to his ear. "Dad? Dad, you there?"

A slight murmur of a voice bled through the phone.

"Dad?!"

The quick edge of his father's voice shot through the speaker. " _Yes_ , Keller. Jughead Jones. But the kid is-"

"Archie!" Betty pressed, her nails also, unintentionally, pressing into his arm.

Unintentionally, but still painfully.

"Ow! Betty-"He squirmed from her grip, turning to offer her frustration a glance of reassurance that he was seconds away from ending the call.

Archie nearly toppled over in his momentum when he was met with a face of pale shock rather than annoyance. And it was directed at her hand, not him.

Betty was never fragile with him, and she had barely touched him. She didn't need to get worked up about gripping his arm too hard.

He wanted to ease her apparent fear that she had somehow hurt him when a shout resounded by his ear.

"Archie! You still there?!"

Archie shuddered in humorous relief.

 _Finally._

"Yeah! Dad, listen. We might know where Jughead went!" His eyes shot to Betty's in a search for absolute certainty. Her eyes stuttered away from her hands clasped together below her belt, to offer a few resolute nods.

"You-"Fred cut off, directing his voice away from Archie. "He says they may know where he went, hold on…"

And the back to him. "Did Jug reach you?"

"No, we…wait, I still gotta ask Betty." He replied pulling the phone slightly away. "Betty, my Dad's asking- what did you find out," Archie questioned.

The previous emotion that had painted Betty's face was nowhere to be seen as the familiar expression of an unrelenting Betty Cooper fire returned. She gave another glance towards Pop before giving Archie her full attention.

"Apparently, after I left, Jughead came back inside after his first order," she recounted. "Pop said he walked outside before coming back to make another order," Betty broke off and turned to the mentioned diner owner as he came forward.

The man settled a feeling of confidence as he met Archie's eyes. "Jones came in for another bag. With the bit of waiting he did for the mess of his first order to be righted out and then again for the second to be made, I believe he left about…" he stole a glance to the clock on the wall, "twelve."

Archie lowered his brows at the limited shift in information. Jughead had apparently killed more time than expected at the diner, but he had still been silent for hours.

And time was still ticking.

Archie turned to Betty with confusion. "Okay, but how does that-"

"The order!" Betty exclaimed, "I thought it was for your dad at first, since Jug was already getting himself and you something, but then Pop said..." Again her bundle of hair twirled from his vision as her neck twisted towards the man.

"F.P. Jones." Pop offered and Archie nearly felt nerve pain as he too whipped his head at the familiar name. "Medium rare, pepper jack cheese, I didn't think of it 'till you kids came in but – I've been working here long enough to know – that's F.P. Jones's usual."

Archie swept his eyes between the familiar staple of the town and the feminine blonde staple of his life. Betty was looking at him with an expectation for him to connect the dots.

"So Jug…"

"Got a third order for F.P. Yes." Her eyes crinkled. "Or, probably… but mostly yes," Betty finished. "There's at least a good chance he stopped at his dad's trailer," she shuffled a hand into her pocket pulling out her own phone. "I'm gonna try to call Mr. Jones again."

Maybe he was wired wrong. There should have been a certain burst of adrenaline at the prospect of a new and hopeful clue.

Betty's fingers dialed an unseen number, before peering back to him. "Pop said he'll drive us to Sunnyside to check."

Maybe he was the only one stuck in this numbing pit where the whole thing was just too good to be true.

The jangle of car keys pulled his thoughts to Pop's hand. "Can't help but think… Jughead's not one to waste a meal, I still say he'd head back to your place Andrews," Pop mentioned with a guilty tilt of a frown, brought on from raining doubt onto the possibility of an optimistic parade.

"Not to mention," Betty continued. "Jug would have told you if he was staying at his dad's, Archie."

Or, maybe he wasn't the only one.

Maybe, optimism wasn't the default for Riverdale anymore.

Betty pointed to the phone that now rested by his hip while moving the sound of a dial tone beside her head. "You should tell your dad, Arch. That we're going." She took his wrist in a slightly less tightening grip and stepped towards the entrance. "Pop needs to lock up, then we'll go."

Another jangle of keys met Archie's ears as Pop moved to open the diner door. "Car's in the back, I'll be quick."

Archie pulled the device up from its forgotten position as he and Betty exited the warm container of the restaurant and into the blistering cold of the night. Snow flickered by his peripheral and a strange silence met his ear even as Betty rattled off a hurried message to the definite voicemail box that F.P. had left her.

"Mr. Jones, this is Betty Cooper. Again…"

Archie pulled his phone down to inspect the screen.

"Jughead still isn't answering his phone and we were wondering if you had heard from him or…"

The previous label of _DAD_ had disappeared; a black screen faced Archie as speckles of snow fell onto its flat surface.

"When you get this can- if you can just call me back please? Jughead hasn't…just call back as soon as possible. It's an emergency."

It was dead.

Betty's gaze bore an angry hole into her own phone. "No luck Archie."

Had Betty not been in the line of fire, he would have flung his phone into the dark blanket of the night.

* * *

Another rolling thud vibrated through the car, choking Archie around his seatbelt as he tried to return Betty's phone to the front row.

"Gah-!" The black leather locked just as slender fingers took the blue encased phone from his hand. With its retrieval he shifted back to a more comfortable position and danced his own fingers across the red line that was probably painted across his neck with the force.

"I'm guessing your dad wasn't too happy with us heading off without him." Archie raised his head to see Betty. Her chin rested an inch above her shoulder and a consoling smile formed on her lips.

"Sorry." His chest bent inwards as the smile tilted down along with the direction of her eyes. "I'm the one who's been pushing forward all night, it's not fair for you to get the backlash from it."

Betty Cooper once again picking up his own mess and taking it as her own.

"Betty." He clicked the red button to release the locking belt from his chest. "You are not taking the blame for this." His fingers danced along the strap as it pulled back to its home beside the window lined outside with ice. "Seriously. Whatever sentencing my dad gives me is completely mine to bear." With a swift tug he brought the buckle back along his chest and into the square opening. "I want to be out here."

As he finally settled under the comfort of a breathable safety feature he blinked up to meet Betty's eyes. He was just in time for them to turn away from his hand that rested besides the belt's end.

"I _want_ to help Jughead."

Betty's voice lowered to a whisper. "Me too."

Archie whispered a prayer that their help wouldn't be too late.

A sudden breathy chuckle resounded next to Betty as the car lurched around a corner.

"You kids can let me take the heat for this one." Archie caught the bright eyes of Pop as they reflected from the front mirror. "I knew no one was gonna stop you two from running after Jones; at the very least I could make sure you kids didn't try to trek across town in this blizzard."

Betty moved off the shoulder of her seat, returning to a straightened position. "Thank you Pop, we really appreciate it," the sincerity from Betty warmed the air along with the heat blasting near Archie's feet.

A moment passed between them as the continual crunch of snow beneath wheels was muted from the thick glass of Archie's door. Through the clear wall Archie noticed a familiar row of houses that were an obvious hint that they were nearing their destination.

He could've continued to rest in the warm seat, comfortably bundled in Pop's thick black coat – which the man had insisted Archie wear upon recognizing his pitiful state of a thin shirt and jeans, while he waited outside the "chock lit' shoppee," in the falling snow, with Betty – listening to the muffled rumble of the moving car through the now desolate streets of Riverdale. However, a spark of recollection shot him away from his resting position by the window.

"Betty, that reminds me," he started waiting for her to face him before continuing. "I don't know if you overheard, but my dad said he's with Sheriff Keller, he was outside the construction site on patrol, so at least he knows about Jughead too."

The pair of blonde eyebrows arched in surprise. "Yeah I heard you say something about Sheriff Keller…" she ended as a thoughtful look flashed over her eyes. "Why was he out this late? I wonder if something came up, a lead or some late night call..."

Archie shook his head. "My dad said some kids got pulled over and taken to the station. There was a report for property damage to a mailbox or something, he was checking the scene, I guess."

The car was slowing to a stop as Archie noticed the cluster of trailer homes which littered past Betty's cheek and over the dashboard.

"Whatever it was I'm glad your dad was able to meet up with him," Betty said just as the car came to a complete stop.

"Alright kids, this is it. I'm guessing you know which trailer to head to?" Pop questioned, reaching an arm to pull the emergency break up. "I'll keep the car running and if something comes up you high tail it straight back here. Understood?"

Betty had already pushed her own door open and was throwing a boot out into the white covering of the ground. "We will, thank you Pop."

Archie followed suit and exited the car. "Yeah, thanks Pop."

"You kids have been a part of my diner and life since before you were born, this is the least I can do." The man flashed a brilliant smile.

A warm vision washed over Archie as he stepped into the cold night.

Memories of long nights spent crowded into a single booth at Pop's diner.

Three kids wrestling over food, laughing along to the soft music of the night, spending every moment convinced that the feeling of perfection would last for eternity – the fundamental part of Riverdale and himself.

Archie shut the car door and quickly turned to the blonde piece of that nostalgic whole.

Yet, as he really took her in, he felt the flickering of those precious memories cease.

Betty trembled under the fluttering specks of white that brushed along her tightly drawn cheeks. Her eyes wandered past him searching for the end point of their current clue, darkened and crackling with a hidden pain. Besides her waist even the pale white of her knuckles became prominent with the tightening grip she held them in.

The last time he had seen her in such a broken state was with him. His mind wandered to the night of the dance and further.

Even in their seemingly untouchable times of childhood innocence there had been bits of hurt or heartbreak. For him a divorce. For Jughead a broken home. But so often for Betty, he knew, her tears had shed with him. _Because_ of him.

But not recently. Not even at points back then.

The realization should have been startling, but it felt somehow right, like how a group of four now felt more full and right then a booth of only three.

Betty never hurt, not when _Jughead_ was there. Not when it was just Jughead and Betty.

As they shuffled through the blanket of snow to the shadowed trailer in the far corner of the park Archie swore to himself that he'd find their missing piece.

Jughead hadn't hurt Betty yet, and Archie sure as hell wasn't going to let him.

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

I am S O sorry, it took me forever to update this! Finals absolutely obliterated me, but they're over! Also, I guess we're heading to F.P. now. I had this chapter drafted way back when the stills for episode 11 came out I just never got around to finishing it up, but I absolute exploded when I saw Jughead was bringing his dad food. I almost straggled my sister like "DUDE I CALLED THAT." Also episode 12 provided an in-canon Betty and Archie searching for Jughead so you can imagine the puddle I melted into.  
Anyway enough of my musing, let me know what you thought of this chapter! We're about half through now, enjoy the rest of the ride 3 And thank you all for the support and amazing feedback, it's so heartwarming!


	4. Sure as Hell

Chapter 4

 _Sure as Hell_

"Remind me to burn my converse after this."

A huff of white clouded the air besides him and replaced the probable chuckle he would have usually received from Betty.

"Not the best snow shoe, huh?" She replied, sneaking a short glance to his soaking wet popsicles that were barely a pathetic excuse for shoes.

Trudging through the blanketed field of Sunnyside Park had left his feet with a deep bone cutting chill as the snow bled through the thin material of his sneakers. The obnoxiously bright red color had turned a dark brown as the lining became wet with their walk, though with the snow nearing what Archie considered about five inches, and still falling, soon enough he'd be rid of looking at the painful sight of his feet as they were slowly swallowed in white.

He also tried to ignore the twisting clutch in his gut at the idea of piling snow.

Betty shrugged her shoulders. "Somethings don't change, I guess."

In the silent void of only pattering ticks of snowflakes, Archie found himself gravitating towards the warmth of her voice. "Yeah… fall in Riverdale is still a summer in Alaska," He offered in return and briskly rubbed his palms together the second they had left his pockets.

Apparently _that_ line deserved an improved mock chuckle, and a slap on the arm.

"Not just that." Betty's eyes squeezed in gentle amusement. "Archie, you never dress for the weather, and when you did, first off, it was only because of your mom, and second it hardly ever mattered since you'd always lose something: a glove, a scarf - and remember your coat that one time!"

Archie let go of a light reverberating breath and kicked an icy cluster that bumped the ridge of his right toe. "Hey, I've just never been a layers guy." He followed the short trail of the rolling clump before shooting Betty an accusing look. "Also, the coat was totally not my fault!"

The sleeve of Pop's thick black coat was bunched into Betty's hand to hold her steady as she seemed to trip into the memory.

"You used it as a flag for Jug's treehouse, and just because you were surprised that it blew away doesn't mean-."

"Okay, wait!" He interrupted. "Jughead was the one who wanted the flag."

She pointed a comically insincere look of objection towards him.

"Actually if I remember it right he insisted on a _real_ flag. You're the one guilty of the makeshift coat-flag idea." Her palm flattened on his sleeve to give him a slight push with the accusation.

Archie smirked at her joking brush against him.

"Okay, okay. I guess I'm guilty!" He lightly laughed.

"I can't believe you're gonna throw Jughead under the bus," she paused with a snort. "When he even lent you his own coat to walk home."

Betty's ponytail disturbed the soft downward flow of a few flakes as it brushed side to side across her back, and a sound that Archie swore was a giggle left her lips. Around them a soft reassurance was settling along with the harsh bite of the cold air. If they hadn't been weaving in between parked trucks and darkened trailer homes on a path to find a missing friend it would've been almost normal.

 _Almost_.

If there wasn't a persistent voice in his mind that kept reminding him that in minutes their arrival to the door steps of Jughead's home would lay these tranquilities to rest, then he probably could have enjoyed this moment with Betty. At the very least he wanted to preserve it, keep the gentle but determined light in her eyes, which was rising from the weightless air around them. He was feeling desperate enough to almost mouth a half-finished quip back to Betty. Something about Jughead being the layers guy and how it was hardly a loss for him to donate to the Andrews' charity of bad dress and jock jackets; he almost let it slip.

 _Almost_.

Until he found himself not just tipping back into the memory - a newly built treehouse, a badly knotted coat around a jagged stick, the harsh winds of the evening that came unexpectedly, and the bear arms of a younger and scrawnier, yet still beanie owner, Jughead, as he relinquished his own coat at the end of a fruitless search for a fly away flag - but fully submerged. Even the mumbling complaints that had wandered about Archie's mind on his walk home regarding the tightness of the coat– which must have been sizes too small for even Jughead, who had always been shorter than him – were muffling his awareness of the present. Archie was once again living through his judgmental question from years ago: _Why didn't Jug just get a new coat?_

A sudden swirl of thoughts whipped by with the recollection, but he focused on two: how _badly_ he wanted to fucking punch himself in the corner of his jaw (now and years ago) for being so _oblivious_ to Jughead's suffering that was always blaring in his face, and… if he had even thanked Jughead for lending his coat.

Maybe he had, but considering how much was left unsaid between them - how much Archie never noticed and how much shit Jughead let himself put up with when they were friends - He probably said nothing.

Betty took a slight turn to the right, swerving off their straight path, and Archie felt the anxious silence settling between them again.

As the familiar tree planted behind FP's trailer came into view Archie found himself suddenly drawn away at the sound of another breathy laugh from besides him.

He shuffled closer to her to catch a look at her face. A wistful expression was passing by the familiar pale features and then settled into a fitting image of reminiscing - like she had seen the finished picture of a puzzle she was working on.

"It's funny," Betty said turning towards him. "You lost your coat and went home early with Jug's… he probably wouldn't have stopped at Pop's that night- that's how I heard about it, you know, the coat fiasco?"

 _He didn't._

"I just remember thinking, it was always the three of us… that was the one time... maybe the first…" she broke off, eyes wandering away from his own. "Of just us."

She left him with a lull in the conversation that he could possibly fill. Add something about their childhood trio, finally mention the probably (always) appropriate match of her and Jughead that he had never seen, even lead into his own drifting towards a new relationship with a certain pent house princess. Or maybe offer her the reassurance she deserved, beyond a lighthearted conversation in the dead of night.

"Betty, I'm sure…" he began searching for the appropriate words. "Jughe-"

"The truck!" she gasped halting in her step.

Archie nearly fell over her now firmly planted feet.

"The truck?" he questioned, following her now straightened arm to the edge of her pointed finger.

Sure enough as they stood with a clear view of the small opening around the Jones' trailer the green and white frame of FP's truck lay parked in their line of sight.

Archie quicken his pace of wading through the white layering around his feet to approach the seemingly abandoned vehicle. The short distance was easily closed and Archie nearly collapsed into a pile of snow as he skidded to a halt in front of the hood. A snap of blonde blew past his peripheral as Betty rounded to the driver's side, leaving them both to inspect the thin dusting of a white coat on the hood and, as Archie twisted to peer towards the ground, two sunken rows of tracks leading away from the tires.

With a quick glance to the deep black of the trailer windows Archie felt a burn slither through his stomach at the image his mind began to concoct. FP Jones collapsed on the couch, deaf to the constant ringing of his cell phone as Betty attempted to reach him, and, probably, dead to the world when his son had stopped by for an inspection of possible improvement, which was poorly disguised as a white takeout bag, heavy with a lump of food that wouldn't be eaten.

A deeply selfish part of Archie resurfaced that wished Jughead could abandon the unrewarded hope he always scrapped up from the abyss of his broken home and empty promises. Abandon FP. Abandon hope. Come home and shake Archie awake from his corpselike state over untouched science homework with burgers in hand, still warm from an early return.

Instead, Archie was standing alone wishing that Jughead could leave behind a part of his life that Archie himself could never live without.

" _He's my dad, Archie."_

He understood. Better than anyone. It seemed Jughead still didn't believe that, considering his keeping quiet about this late night trip.

Archie glanced over to Betty who had abandoned the four wheeled clue and was climbing the wooden steps to the trailer door.

If he was feeling hurt that Jughead hadn't confided in him, he wondered how Betty, the self-appointed care taker of their group and, apparently, protector of Jughead Jones, was feeling.

He began rounding the hood to follow her trail. "I guess FP's been home all night," he finally muttered with a gradual step out of the foot shaped hole his soggy converse had made, but faltered in the process at the scrunching face Betty gave him.

Sharp green eyes were bulging out with a slightly slackened jaw as Betty turned towards him. "Archie what the hell are you talking about? How could FP be here all night if the truck is barely covered in snow?"

Archie felt himself sink into his snow hole as he once again inspected the thin layer brushed over the truck.

 _Five inches and falling…_

"I hadn't even-"

An intrusive fist slammed against the door. "Mr. Jones! It's Betty Cooper!" Another slam. "If you're there please open up!" Archie brushed eyes across the empty shadows of the trailer windows as another slam caught a sharp knock of Betty's knuckles. "It's about Jughead!"

"Betty?!"

A rough voice had cut from the side of the trailer and Archie jumped at the unexpected disruption of Betty's unrelenting racket.

There at the sharp corner of the white paneled home stood FP Jones, shovel in hand, staring back towards Archie and Betty with a look of incredulous shock. The lines of his forehead were thickening in confusion, but Archie couldn't miss the growing whites of FP's eyes as they formed into a familiar expression.

It was expression that Fred Andrews rarely wore, choosing instead to hide it away from him. Brush it away before it spread.

Fear.

"Fred called me on my way back, said you two were on your way over with Pop Tate."

Archie broke out into a cold sweat.

"You just got home?" Archie gently asked.

FP sauntered over to him as Betty made her way down from the door step.

"About twenty minutes ago, got a call from your dad as soon as my phone turned on. Filled me in." He gestured to the truck with the shovel. "Figured I'd catch you two in the truck before you got here."

"Mr. Jones," Betty started, and Archie was sure he would forever be haunted by the passing flickers of hope that she offered FP. "Did Jughead-?"

"He's not here."

The remaining light shattered from Betty's eyes.

Archie dropped a hand to the splintering railing of the wooden stairs and squeezed.

"But he was. He left a bag of takeout while I was out."

A satisfying pain caught his palm from a jagged nail.

"With the Serpents?" Archie snapped.

The pressure of short nails caught his elbow and pulled his arm harshly to his side in a silent command to shut up.

"Archie." Betty shot him a warning, though it was the catch in her throat that simmered his anger and primal need to blame. Blame FP for not being home. Blame Jughead for staying silent. Blame himself for not being able to do _a damn thing about any of it._

FP hardly seemed defensive after the blow, he ran a hand through a few stray locks over his brow.

"Look, now's not the time, alright?" He sighed, blowing a puff of air that lingered in Archie's vision, slightly obscuring the look of guilt he thought FP wore. "We need to go. I'm bringing you two over to the station to meet Fred."

"Wha-," Archie stuttered. "Are we supposed to just sit around at the station now?

Betty's grip choked his sleeve. "Mr. Jones, we can't- We _need_ to be out here!"

FP lips parted with the beginnings of a word, but Betty pulled forward not giving him a second.

"No! Whatever Sheriff Keller, Mr. Andrews, or even you think is best, just isn't enough right now!" Archie's arm was jostled as she pressed each sound with enough force to pull him from the railing. "What we should be doing. _Right. Now."_ She slowed before lunging forward at the obstacle before them. "Is raising _hell_ to find Jughead- and we're _going_ to find him. I am not leaving him alone out there!"

The demand ended with enough force that it lingered in the air around them, echoing across the falling snow that passed beyond his view.

The shadowed eyes of the Jones in front of them slowly turned to reflect the fire that burned in the girl besides him.

FP exhaled something close to a laugh. "You're really something." Another ruffle of white speckled hair. "We won't waste any more time. Call Andrews, tell him we're not heading to the station."

For the first time of the night Archie felt relief pour over him.

"Mr. Jones!" Betty practically bounced off Archie's arm and tackled the flannel covered chest.

"We still need to meet up with your dad, Archie," FP grimaced, "and Keller." The shovel clutched to his side was repositioned in his palm. "We'll catch them halfway. Call Fred, let him know, I'll start the truck."

Betty curtly nodded and scrambled for her cell phone buried in one of her pockets.

"It isn't like him."

Archie perked up at the startling softness of the usual rough edge of FP Jones' voice.

"What?" He asked, with a slight certainty that he already knew.

FP balled a fist and firmly swiped it over the corner of his eye. "Fred said you haven't heard from him since eleven?"

Archie nodded.

"Almost five hours... guys didn't see anything in the park either," FP muttered with an abrupt turn from Archie and towards the snow covered truck.

In the quiet the under breath of " _God, damn it, Jughead_ ," brushed back to Archie's ears.

Before he could decide to follow FP as he went to toss the shovel into the truck's back a small tug was felt on his back.

"Archie."

He shot a look to Betty who was patiently listening for the end of a soft dial tone.

She offered a sympathetic look. "Pop."

 _Right._

The night had a theme going of bumming rides from everyone else.

"Yeah," The flickering of high beams brought his shadow over Betty. "I'll tell FP, so we pass him on the way out."

Betty nodded but Archie found the gesture shortened as she tilted away from the phone and inspected the screen.

"It went to voicemail…" she let her eyes dart back and forth between his face and the glowing screen.

"Hey!" Archie craned his neck to the shout. FP stood with one foot precariously placed on into the truck, he had just stepped out. Against his ear was a cell phone.

"It's Fred! He's already on board with skipping the station! Keller stopped on a street nearby so we're headed there!"

Betty tucked her phone away and brushed past him before he had the chance to move. "Mr. Jones!" she called, approaching the side of the truck. "Pop's still waiting for us by the main street entrance, can we stop there?"

FP nodded offering the opened door to Betty which she quickly climbed into.

"We'll stop, but we need to get a move on. Like you said Jughead can't wait all night."

Archie tumbled into the truck after the already comfortably situated blonde and tried to settle himself as FP pushed the thicker coating of snow from the front windows with his sleeves.

Below the view he glimpsed a small digital amalgam that when his eyes adjusted became a sentencing.

 _5:03 AM_

All he mustered was a long curse drowned under his tongue.

Then another two for the extremely noticeable pain in his toes and the cramming of his legs between slender black leggings and faded denim on the driver's side.

* * *

After staring at the roads of white highlighted by the dull yellow of truck headlights for several left turns and three rolling stops Archie now had the honor of standing in them.

Eight beams of light blasted every inch of the right sided neighborhood road and seared blackened veins in his vision. Somehow, the left side of the road was barely brightened by the glow as it stayed permanently shadowed with the wooded ridges that lined the outside of Sweetwater River. With the current tension in the air it seemed that no one was making any move to turn off their cars so the obnoxious strike of light continued.

Their meeting point with his dad had been the (already) decrepit pieces of property damage that Sheriff Keller had been searching for, and had turned out somewhere between Sunnyside Park and his dad's construction lot. The angry neighbor– who to Archie's confusion was not the owner of the mailbox – had called at the horrible sound of screeching tires that had fled from a murdered mailbox, yet he refused to be involved in any questioning. The man retired back into his ranch style home and into the luxury of heat leaving Sheriff Keller rightly irritated.

All he and Betty could do for heat was snuggle closer into the triangle of bodies. FP, his dad, and Pop, though, even without his coat, Pop was definitely the warmest – he was thankful the man was insistent on once again tagging along.

Sheriff Keller jostled his flashlight, almost enjoying the clunking noise of batteries inside. "Andrews, like I said- all things considered- we could be looking at a runaway situation."

FP bumped Archie out of the way as he snapped forward at the man. "That'd be easy wouldn't it? Wrap this up nicely and say my kid just skipped town."

It seemed an argument was unavoidable now and the best course of action, was for him to slink away. Betty had the same idea and was escaping the cluster to the side of the road while switching on the flashlight of her phone.

"There's no way in hell, Jug would have skipped town." She muttered when he approached her free from the pack. She even allowed her free hand to quote the words with contempt.

She was right. There was no way Jughead had fled Riverdale without word or reason on a random Wednesday night.

Unless there _was_ a reason.

Unless Jughead _had_ bottled something away, hiding it from him, brushing it off, keeping it silent and during the middle of the night decided it was easier to just handle it alone.

Unless it was another something just under Archie's nose like an outgrown ratty jacket that Jughead had perhaps given as a cry for help, which he never heard.

There was so much he wasn't sure of with Jughead now. The consequential doubt and guilt latched onto each pit of his stomach with an intent to drown.

"Betty what if..."

She threw a startlingly look over her shoulder. How Betty Cooper was capable of it, he probably would never know, but she offered him a sense of understanding beyond her own fear.

"Arch, we're his friends, he would have come to us. You know that."

His feet shifted uncomfortably in the snow by the curb. "Or at least he would have gone to you," he considered.

A disbelieving shadow filled the lines by Betty's eyes. "Or you, Archie. You're his friend too, I don't know what happened with you two but... not everything changed. Jug's the same. You're the same. He'd still give you his coat or walk all the way home just to bring you a burger," she smiled softly with a sad undertone. "And you'd run half way across town to find him in this Riverdale-Alaskan summer."

"Yeah but... I don't think- he doesn't think I would... do something like that for him," he confessed with a choke of shame. The idea of a onetime deed of friendship didn't seem to even out the shit show he'd left in their friendship.

The flashlight of Betty's phone blinded him as it shone across his face when she turned to approach the damaged remains of metal and wood by the hidden sidewalk.

"Then tell him you would, Archie. For Jug... just that, would go a long way."

He stiffened. "Yeah…you're right."

If Betty was sure so was he.

She moved away with the gentle crunching of snow. A murmur of silence was left from her footsteps and it took him a moment to find it odd as his mind still whirled through her familiar advice. When he finally inspected the four men behind him it seemed things had settled before a storm.

And it was Fred Andrews who was holding it back.

His dad held FP by the shoulder keeping him a step back with Pop who was keeping the other shoulder. As the three men faced Keller in almost a classic lineup before a high school brawl, it was a clear indication that Betty wasn't alone on her side.

"Keller, look." Fred started and Archie shifted away to follow Betty and the striking beam of her phone over the white front lawn. "Jughead's a good kid. Archie and Betty say he was headed home and I'm gonna take their word on it. I don't want to say it but…"

In her device's light the mailbox was unrecognizable, mangled, and quietly sad as it sunk in parts into the snow.

"I think we're looking at a worse cause scenario here."

Betty leaned over digging her bare hand into the snow. The clutched form of her fingers made it seem like she was pummeling the layer of white fluff.

"Leave no stone unturned," Betty said with knees sinking into the wet ground. "If the only thing that's _off_ in all of Riverdale tonight is a stupid mailbox then I'm searching every inch of it."

She drew her hand out slightly with a cluster of snow and watching her suddenly became a new source of guilt. Archie squatted down to help her search for whatever she seemed confident would be there. Before he could stick palms into snow the mound of snow she left behind made him yelp.

Streaking over the pure white was a thick red line.

"Betty that's-!"

She didn't give him the chance to worry.

"No its- its mine." She dug her fist back into the snow and brushed more clumps onto his feet. "I must have just…" Betty was gritting her teeth, "nicked myself on something."

He glanced to the remains of the mailbox that were scattered away from them. They were not in Betty's inspection area. There could have been a loose nail, but her alarm and dismissal reminded Archie of the way Betty usually lied.

"Are you sure?" he approached offering a hand to her shoulder with eyes still locked onto the now pinkness of the snow. "Maybe Sheriff Keller has gloves or FP brought a shovel we could-"

The red splatters were instantly forgotten as something white and sickly recognizable was pulled by her hand.

"Betty..."

Just a green P and O was readable on the side as the other letters bled together. The bottom was spilling mushed pieces of meat into the brown slush of the street as Betty raised it from the ground. Archie had carried the item home all his life he hardly needed a quick study.

A Pop's takeout bag

 _Worst case scenario._

Before his jaw could open or connect the bag beyond a coincidence of Riverdale trash Betty was up and pushing every soul out of her way.

"Sheriff Keller." She halted dangling the sopping wet thing at him like it had just fired the killing round. "Who was it? Who were the kids you took to the station? The ones who hit the mailbox, were they from Riverdale High?"

Keller sighed and Archie was on his feet clambering to reach her side at the hesitation.

"Betty that's information I can't just give out and a bag from the one diner in town ain't-"

"Who?" she echoed.

Keller peered with a frustrated quirk in his jaw to Archie's shoulder where his dad now stood.

Rubbing a hand down his face Keller sighed. "Two boys. Jocks."

"Any names?" Fred asked arms crossed and steered for something unseen.

"You can't be blind Sheriff, Jughead has trouble with those kids," Pop softly spoke from behind the group with FP who had shrunk back at the familiar bag in Betty's hand.

The same kind that had been left in his trailer hours ago.

Another sigh. A shake of the flashlight. A tip of the hat and then the name that made Archie see hell.

"Chuck Clayton."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

This chapter was hell to finish, but I'm really happy with the way it came out! Also for those wondering "Where's Jughead?" Well I guess we'll know soon...

(As always thanks for all the support, I love you guys)


	5. The Road Less Traveled

_Chapter 5_

 _The Road Less Traveled_

" _Chuck Clayton?"_

The name was said again before Archie's insides could spill from the gaping hole its first reverberation sliced open, and splatter to the cold hardened ground.

And people often said not to jump to conclusions.

Lots of people. His dad for instance. " _Get the whole story Arch_ ," he'd say sometimes, after Archie provided his own conclusive opinion from just one piece of a dramatic or frustrating life puzzle. But he'd like to think, under normal circumstances - when he wasn't standing half frozen on the far side of the neighborhood with his adrenaline rising to an all-time high - that he'd be able to follow that objectively good Andrews' advice.

But in the same instance he was always someone who never looked before he leaped - _the Serpents, the Blossoms, Geraldine -_ or maybe there weren't enough circumstances in his life to be considered normal enough to judge his patience.

At the very least if "look before you leap" and "don't jump to conclusions" were branches from the same tree then he's not just jumping or leaping, but lunging off the nearest cliff entitled _Chuck Clayton._

"Chuck was driving?" His jaw gobbed out messily as his body stalked towards Sheriff Keller's visibly irritated form. "If Chuck was driving- he could have done something! Jug was out at the same time, maybe they ran into each other here," he rattled off, zipping for a look at the wooden debris behind them and catching the eyes of his father in the turn too. "Dad, Jug could have been here when they hit the mailbox, Chuck was already suspended once this year- maybe he did something to shut him up about the accident!''

Fred paced forward with a concerned open hand as if he could stop his mind's desperate flight.

"Archie wait, we don't know-"

"There could have been another fight, and if there was, Chuck might know where he is!" He raised his voice to cover the objection. A confused twitch responded near the corner of his dad's eye.

"What do you mean another fight?" Fred prodded carefully, but was jostled into a start before he could continue as FP reared against his side.

"That kid didn't seem like one to quit," FP muttered with eyes tightly closed. Then gave attention to the man at his side. "Jughead's birthday last week. Kids threw a party that got a bit out of hand." Archie felt himself tense from his forehead down to his chest when a disappointed look came his way. "And Jughead may have thrown the first punch – but, Fred, believe me – Clayton's boy was ready to get more than even after that."

Fred rubbed a heel to his brow. "I believe it," his focus strained to Archie. "I'm guessing this is one reason why I'm only hearing about this party now?"

"Dad..."

"Now hold on." Keller broke in over the starting dispute. "This is exactly why I'd rather keep my mouth shut - you're jumping the gun boy!" He laid a hand over Archie's shoulder, moving him to the side to join the newly formed circle. "First off, Clayton was the passenger in the car and there was no time for the boys to linger here for some unproven scuffle with the time our first officer pulled them over. Not to mention there's no sign of any altercation with Jughead here," He finished with a satisfied exhale.

"Well...maybe there is."

Archie lowered his growing scowl from the Sheriff's authoritative dismisses at the warm suggestion. Pop stood by the opening of the group by the curb of the road with a tilted red piece of plastic in hand. There was a moment of confusion before Archie concocted its previous form.

A mailbox flag.

"I may be getting up there in age but I'll be damned if _I'm_ the slowest one on the uptake," Pop breathed out with a tint of regret. The man connected his eyes with Archie for a second that seemed to speak an apology for being the bringer of bad news concerning his favorite customer.

He wished Pop could have lingered in his direction for a second more before glaring confidently to the town's public protector, maybe he would have seen the eternal thanks that Archie felt gripping along the sides of his chest.

At least one person was fighting on _their_ side.

Keller stood tense and straight as a formidable tower besides him with a jaw clenched in obvious restraint for the respectable member of the town. Until a tight hiss shot next to Archie's head and he turned to see teeth exposed and lips stretching into a frown.

"Well Tate, I'll be damned if we consider a doggy bag - that could have belonged to anyone in this town - and a run over mailbox, the best evidence to go off of," he answered with a tick of annoyance and a harsh tap of his flashlight against the palm of his hand.

"There ain't much else we can go off, Sheriff. Besides can't say I believe that those boys aren't involved or their accident isn't either," Pop said and Archie was sure that his expression was the ultimate demonstration of patience that a human could portray on their face. His view wandered by the red mangled flag Pop held up by his side to catch his dad holding a tight arm on FP who definitely seemed a second away from screaming at both men to blow the slow talk and get a move on.

"And while I also can't say _what_ happened, I can say that Jughead is the type to be pulled into trouble and Chuck is the type to start it." Pop ended with a thumb in the corner of his coat pocket.

There was finally some logic Archie could relate with and he almost found himself nodding along.

Jughead was an easy target and Chuck was the school's recent antagonist - especially for the girls. He was also apparently a new participant in the _kick the shit out of Jughead_ crew. The guy was always a member of Reggie's posse. Reggie, who had beef with Jug's mere existence for some reason Archie never bothered to confront him about - expect that one time he was slammed into the glass of a vending machine and socked in the face on the student lounge floor as a fair fill in for his childhood friend which made him think that maybe he should've brought the subject up sooner to his teammate to stop Jughead from nearly having his face pummeled in.

Either way, even before the meltdown of the Cheryl and Chuck birthday party secrets and sins show, Chuck probably never had a soft spot for the school's self-labeled weirdo.

Hell, it wasn't hard to envision the night's breakdown with him involved.

As soon as he had first heard Chuck's name his mind had already constructed every moment in the scenario. Jughead making his way back home from Sunnyside Park when Chuck and some jock friend drove off the road into the previously upright and fully recognizable mailbox, nearly running him over in the process instead of his abandoned Pop's bag, and _god_ , Jughead probably went over to them trying to help.

Archie clenched his eyes at the mentally concocted sight of hard fists meeting slim bony cheeks and fleece lined jackets harshly pulled up from their flattened position in the snow when the owner couldn't take another hit.

As far as he was concerned, Chuck's name and the Pop's bag next to a practically annihilated mailbox was as close to a smoking gun as they were going to get on the missing Jughead case.

Maybe it wasn't his closest move to good logic but good logic was also realizing that Jughead wasn't some criminal from day one who could murder a fellow classmate in cold blood so _screw it_.

For a moment, only the rumbling of the nearby car engines and the soft pattering touches of flakes against the lining of his coat gave any answer to the confidence Archie was certain he shared with most of the other men that the gallon hat wearing one was wrong. Then a deep sigh shuddered out as a white flag to end the standoff.

"Alright look," Keller began with a hand resting on the top of his hat. "I'm not saying these kids are excluded from any possible involvement with Jughead or that they aren't in any way involved with his disappearance, but what I am saying, or trying to say," he muttered and pushed the hat back so it no longer hid his eyes. "Right now, there's no proof that those two boys got out of their car after hitting the mailbox to have any sort of physical altercation with Jughead and even if they did that hardly helps explain where the kid is now. There's no real proof that the boy came down this road." Archie was startled from listening as his dad relinquished his grip around his old time partner (friend?) and voiced his own damning opinion.

"I think I'm gonna have to side with the Sheriff on this one, sorry to say Pop," Fred shrugged. "There's no sense in jumping to conclusions about what happened, it's not bringing us any closer to find Jughead.

"Well Christ Fred!" FP growled throwing an arm up into the incoming flakes of snow. "If we're going by that logic then standing around here isn't bringing us any closer either." A small interruption came from his dad but FP kept barreling forward. "And Keller I don't care if you think those boys did something or not what I do care about is that you haven't done shit for my boy all night." Jughead's father curled his mouth into a snarl and with its finished hiss Archie felt himself chiming in too.

"FP's right! We're standing around doing nothing again!" He shouted, chancing a glance toward Keller who quickly turned a head his way with a menacing glare. He almost found himself backing down until it gave a striking resemblance to Kevin's pitying but also judgmental flared eye when he recently sweated out on stage.

Envisioning a friend instead of a foe let him straighten his shoulders with better force.

"Now listen boy, I know you and Betty are worried about your friend." He whipped attention back to the man bellowing with rage. "And Jones I've got my own boy, I get it, but I've got a job to do here and that's to find your kid in this blizzard. The boys are already hauled up in the station for speeding and property damage, and going back to question them isn't going to do us any good. The best I can do right now, which I've already done mind you, is contact another officer to check the areas Jughead may have passed through."

Archie harshly ticked his tongue aloud. Some great police work considering Betty and him had followed through on that route and come up with nothing.

The striking silence of his friend reared its head as Sheriff Keller continued and Archie turned back to check on her – considering that the Chuck-Jughead birthday fiasco was rooted in a previous Betty-Chuck fiasco - in typical Betty fashion, she may have been incorrectly blaming herself for Chuck's involvement.

"In the meantime, I've got enough flashlights so that we can split up and search this road for any other _legitimate_ signs of Jughead, but considering the time he's been missing and the weather, there's a good chance he stowed away somewhere else for the night."

Over his shoulder lay a black open street no longer lit by the gracious light of the stationary cars. The row of spaciously plotted houses sat snow covered on one side and the abyss of trees and white topped shrubs stood parallel to them. In the center, where Archie had been standing moments before with the shivering presence of Betty by his side as she clutched the mutilated white Pop's bag in her hands, an empty void crept towards him. A void of another friend.

A crunch of snow bled in and the voice of Pop blended with it.

"Yeah, well… I'm sorry to say but that kinda thing was a lot easier to think before a kid washed up dead with a bullet in his head."

The responding silence gave him enough time to open and close his jaw twice before a sound could break out.

"Betty's gone."

"What was that?" Keller asked.

He tried working his jaw again, but the first time must have been a fluke.

"Where the hell did Betty go?" FP cut in, now suddenly by his side, as Keller stumbled backward whipping the flashlight left and right.

"What in god's name?!" Sheriff Keller exclaimed and traced the straight path Betty's boots had left with the faded yellow stain of his light. "I swear, these Cooper girls!"

In the desolate snow covered road Archie focused his vision from the ground of retreating footprints that began at his toes, until he felt his face squint in a desperate attempt to peer along their barely visible path into the shadow veil at the end of the street. He wanted to believe that if the strain wasn't crossing his eyes and blurring the image before him he would be able to see the bobbing ends of a blonde ponytail disappearing into the horizon line.

He took a step forward and sunk his shoe into the stamped ridges left in one of the prints of Betty's path.

"I'll get her," he worked out loud enough so the four men responded with a look his way. "She's probably upset.

Of all them, FP's eyes softened.

"Archie, you tell her this isn't her fault," he commanded with a subtle authority. "Not to mention whatever she did to that kid was probably warranted." Archie didn't miss the way his own father's eyes flashed with a question at that.

"I will. And we'll come right back here after I do," he answered with added purpose to hopefully hold the incoming nag his dad was preparing.

"Alright," Fred nodded to him and turned to Keller as Archie leaned away. "Sheriff, we might as well start searching the area while we can, and it wouldn't hurt to give Officer Miller another call about his search."

With another step he was lunging ahead into a knee cracking jog, barely catching the agreement to the suggestion and the growing discussion of what he assumed was about the location of flashlights Sheriff Keller had mentioned.

And as the headlights' path faded to a dim reminder of the life behind him he found himself wishing he had grabbed one.

* * *

Within a minute of jogging Archie noticed that the pairs of footprints Betty had left behind were slowly growing farther apart and were looking less and less like she was simply stalking away and instead like she had decided to flee into a sudden sprint.

"Come on, Betty," he panted before gaining speed to match her snow recorded stride.

Even with his route barren of a single street light the sky must have been gracious enough to lend a small tint away from blindness that night. The heavy sleeves of Pop's black coat swished with traction against his sides while a far off glow from above could just let Archie make out the outlined images along the street in the corner of his eyes. Although the row of slanted ranch style rooftops that spotted the right side and twisted away from the road with their long snow hidden driveways were almost harder to see than the hundreds of thin lines to his left that could only be the reaching branches of the Riverdale woods. Probably because he could easily envision the rows and rows of trees held back by the small rickety fence that the town stuck up along the forest's edge years ago - along with the now faded yellow trespassing signs on each vertical post.

In a town like his he didn't need to see a small detail of a fence to know he'd traveled down this same road a hundred times before. Maybe at this same time of night with the same cluster of white painting everything to a state of monotonous similarity.

Yet with the spreading ache in his feet moving up to the back of his calves, the porch lights of each house not caring to shine a brighter tone as he flew by, and the pounds of snow dropping from the thin arms of Riverdale maple trees, nothing along the two way broken blacktop felt like it could fit into the memory of the Riverdale he knew.

Even the broken worn wooden fence that was surely there.

Even Betty. Even Jughead. Even him.

He couldn't recognize them.

"Betty! Wait up!" he called out as his eyes sealed with the strain and annoyance at the blonde escapee.

His sprint slid into a stop for him to breathe deeply before he began a fast paced walk.

It was becoming a certainty that the longer this change between them dragged on the less likely he was ever going to catch up with them. Even before Jason Blossom, he had slowly morphed into the _Mr. Popular Football God (who Jughead hated)_ who wound up waist deep in an illicit relationship with a music teacher ( _which Betty hated_ ), and now in the aftermath it seemed like whoever the old Archie was _he_ hadn't kept any part of him.

Or maybe he was always like this and it was just a matter of time before he lost all of them. The changes in his two closest friends were now apparent to have always been a fraction out of his view - a sleeping bag in a school closet that was voted better than a home and a fracturing family along with a runaway sister that swirled into a blend of aggression towards the local disgusting jockhead - so maybe his recent personal collapse had always been a time bomb strapped to his personality and the name Archie Andrews.

But if all that meant he was going to lose them he would rather rewind and keep the old, oblivious self he had always been, even if it was always destined to fracture into something darker and new.

If that was the way to find Jughead and get him to stay so they could get another hundred chances - that this time he wouldn't screw up - to sit and laugh over whatever the hell they wanted, so that Betty and Veronica would join, and it would be a noticeably different group from the original trio but it would work, or at least this time he'd put a better effort into making it work, and keeping his friends, then -

His spine jolted and brought him to another stop.

For a moment there was only the dry mouthed heaves pushing from his own lungs

Until he heard it again.

A muffled but constant high pitched humming in the area around him.

 _His phone?_

No, it was dead, and he stopped his hand from reaching into his coat pocket to check. The sound was close but farther than his person.

He stepped to the side with his arms spread wide in preparation to jump at the source before it silenced.

The humming grew with clarity of a specific singing note as he inched forward and spun in place kicking the snow until he reached a patch of black. More black was uncovered as the now apparent ringtone was louder than before. Archie crouched down stealing in determination as he was surely closing in on the phone.

And then nothing.

Only silence echoed an inch from his face.

"Are you kidding me?!" His knuckles ached as he punched them into the icy pile. With an angled shove he flung the white covering out of the way until his thumb skidded against the rough black gravel.

But that wasn't enough was it?

Keep digging, keep searching, keep pushing and still, _still,_ it was out of his reach. The cracked ridges of pavement invaded his view and fled from focus as his knees dragged him after the fragmented memory of the ringing's location.

He was so close.

If he had a little more of something or _was_ a little more of something – _a better friend_ – maybe he could have grabbed the string that was dangling his world in twirling cruel patterns of mockery that barely evaded his grip. But that was just it. He never could.

 _He_ wasn't enough…

And he was so tired of it.

He just wanted to find Jughead, and let the damn night finally end. _Couldn't he be enough for one friend?_

The snow bunching around his knees wasn't growing any colder, but it certainly wasn't getting any warmer either, and maybe a part of him that always called for surrender decided to push himself away from this failure and follow the boot prints after the next one.

He really screwed himself falling asleep. A dead phone never made things easy and having his on would have at least let him reach Betty, or test dial the number his clenched stomach and erratic heartbeat were sure belonged to the buried phone. And if his gut feeling was right…

Well, even Sheriff Keller couldn't argue that a dropped cell phone was more definitive than a Pop's paper bag.

A crack resonated in the stillness as his legs straightened and strained to find balance to tread through thick white covering. In the dim moonlight he barely glimpsed the straight path Betty had left behind on the other side of the road, forgotten in his unsuccessful mad dash. Somehow he was still holding a bit of luck with the indents still there, seeing that the blacktop he had uncovered was already disappearing under a soft covering like the spot around his own pants cuff.

His foot swiped across the ground to clear the layer.

He could only respond with a full body jolt when he met with something solid, kicking it further into the snow that just lay off the road.

"Oh, crap!"

His voice and knees cracked with the startle as he followed after, pushing his red tipped fingers into the icy layer he had kicked into a crumbled wall.

There was no desperate sprawling and scratching hopeless across the road. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around the flat rectangle below, pulling it out in an instant.

Archie shot back up as he maneuvered his aching fingers to press the button on the ice cold phone.

It felt like there should have been a grander effect when the screen powered on for its reveal.

Somewhere, some part of himself, filed away the white thin numbers lining the top so he could recount the time - _5:32 AM_ \- along with the signature white " _S_ " filling the dark background -which the deeper, unthinking, conclusion jumping part of him expected _-_ so he could focus on the grey missed call box filling the upper screen.

And then the incoming call box that suddenly filled the entire phone screen.

Simply labelled: _Betty._

Somewhere he found the motor skills to answer, although not enough to talk before sharp and shattering pieces ofa curse filtered into his ear and sliced down his chest.

" _Jughead! What. The. Hell-"_

He had to force the correction out before he heard her shaky burning tone turn to choking and painfully wrong relief.

She was fumbling over half a ramble when he spit the words over his tongue. "Betty! Betty. It's me. It's Archie." He hadn't been sprinting in the last few minutes yet he found himself desperately seeking air with each piece. "I found Jughead's phone in the road."

"Ju- Wha _t, Archie!?"_ She stopped after his name for her own, almost undetectable, catch of breath. "Oh my god, _you_ found Jughead's phone _,"_ she repeated with a readable distance and he was startled by the certainty in her voice as if she had expected something like this.

"Archie, where are you? Did you find it by the mailbox or-"

"No, no," he cut in glancing back towards his own foot printed path before returning to the uncontained wall of trees ahead. _Wasn't he sure there was a fence lining the wooded side?_

"Well!" Betty huffed. "Where are you?!" Her frustration easily pulled him back and he stood to scan down the road hoping to see a sign of the girl with a face glowing from her own phone.

"I'm further down the road from where we parked. I started following you when we realized you took off, which by the way, what was up that - or with this!" He gestured wildly to her frustratingly unseen form. "Where are you _,_ Betts?"

"I'm further down the road." His head rolled along with his eyes.

"Well yeah, I gathered that, after following your tracks, Betty. But where-"

"I'm in the woods."

Archie crossed the phantom line that had once held a rickety old keep out fence and darted by a row of trees that decorated the end of the flat ground before the expected steep drop. The uneven grounds of Riverdale's wilderness were for the local scouts, not his two left feet.

"I'm probably-" She paused to grunt along with the fighting snaps of what he could only assume were twigs and tree branches. "I'm probably not too far away from you, I didn't get to the end of the street because I started looking." Another grunt turned exasperated growl gave Archie time to start his careful steps down the pine tree littered slope. "Lookingfor something Jughead could have dropped along the street or something that proved what Chuck and his friend tried to do."

Archie's balance, unsteady for a moment, almost teetered him into a dead shrub and the remaining half of its body that was not lying flattened around its base.

"What Chuck tried to do?" He echoed before finding an original thought to vocalize over Betty's incoming sigh. "You mean proving that he tried to start some shit again like at the party?" A side profile of Betty shakily holding her breath while the undeserving slime from Chuck's narration crawled over every listener in the living room until the harsh crack against skin invaded his ears and something unfamiliar flashed across his best friend's eyes - Archie was pissed all over again.

"Yeah well, it may be obvious to us that Chuck started a fight with Jug," He sniffed with a crossed brow. "But Sheriff stick-up-his-ass isn't going to take Jughead's side no matter what we show him- I mean even if we bring him Jughead's phone he'll still say something like..." He cut off just in time to miss half of her interruption.

"I said, that's probably because there's no obvious fight to prove, Archie, "Betty repeated. "Look just- I've got my phone's flashlight blinking an SOS tell me if you see it so we can meet up, then we'll talk."

Archie blinked straight ahead and still lamely recognized the repeated flashes not too far off in his peripheral. But they were unimportant.

The important things were Betty's apparent mental step ahead of him, the trail of crushed bushes and splintered branches that formed a straight path down, and the bottom of the hill.

"Betty."

He couldn't get out any more than that and hardly noticed the concerned but hopeful question she asked - " _Can you see it Archie?" -_ because the trees were creating distracting flicks across his vision as his legs propelled him down and his chest pounded a deafening beat that flooded into his head.

He tried to form her name over his lips again but there was no success. His voice sliced like glass around his throat when his eyes found the solid form of a shoulder, and when he blinked his fingers were there, gripping it like a lifeline before his knees hit the snow.

A broken cry, a screaming plea, a choking sob, none of it came.

When the beanie covered head rolled with a sickening weight - _no no no no no -_ and the pale features danced around splotches of red that twisted down, sticking the matted clump of dark bangs in place as Archie tried to gather him out of the thick seeping ice below- _please please please_ \- all he managed was a primal, desperate call.

" _Betty_!"

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Sorry for taking an eternity to update, I hit a rough patch in writing and life. Even though it took a while I'm proud with the final product of this chapter and I hope the lead up was suspenseful and worth the wait, but obviously it's not over yet. I promise the next update will be MUCH sooner since if it's not raptorlily (my wonderful cheerleader) will come after me.

Thanks for everyone who has been sticking with me and as always I cannot say thank you enough for all your feedback! 3


	6. With Bated Breath

_With Bated Breath_

He wasn't breathing.

Yet somehow he was finding the air to scream out.

" _Jug_!"

His teeth caught the side of his cheek with a painful slice as his jaw clenched shut.

 _Come on…!_

A hand snuck around the base of Jughead's neck. The other palmed helplessly over buttons strung across the wrinkled denim jacket.

"Jughead, come on!"

His chest sunk in with every passing millisecond of silence, crushing his lungs flat against his spine. A force that was snapping his back in two, cutting off every nerve ending in his body.

"Jug! Come on... wake up!"

His voice snapped and he pulled the body up, praying his words rattled something alive inside. The movement only jostled something from his own eye, letting it plop sickly and wet by the two parted lips below.

"Please, Jug, please, you gotta... urgh." The plea ended weakly when Archie slipped under the weight of pulling his friend closer with the strength of one hand. He was faltering and trying to tell himself it wasn't because his throat was catching as Jughead's head flopped as though unhinged from his neck when raised from the ground, and into Archie's lap.

Faltering because when he shakily steadied his ear above Jughead's mouth he couldn't make anything out.

Faltering because his hand gripping indents into Jughead's neck was still fumbling to find any recognizable flutter.

Faltering because Jughead's eyes – one sealed along the side with a streak of brown cakey blood that had matted hair to the gash along his forehead – remained closed.

Because he found himself replacing breathing with heaving and because his original well remembered ideas of high school first aid had been reduced to shaking Jughead back to life. His brain relayed one static instruction to the next. Checking the scene – _Cold, barren, alone, where Jug was lying, maybe conscious maybe not, for hours, maybe thinking no one else would ever come_ – to checking responsiveness – _his hands were sweaty and shaking, maybe he was just bad at it, maybe there was a pulse and he was too messed up to know_ – to the small droll of a feminine voice reminding him to call 9-1-1.

Archie's hand twitched but remained firmly placed around Jughead's left elbow.

Somewhere his mind went to the white outlined image of a dead battery that was still tattooing his phone.

Jughead needed help. _He_ needed help. If there was any time left it was quickly running out and he wasn't doing anything to make things better or help. He was incapable, he was making things worse, he'd finally gotten here and just like before there wasn't anything he could do to-

"... _Archie!"_

 _Oh no... No, no, no!_

He needed her but god she didn't need this. If this was… He needed to stop it.

But his friend was heavy in his arms and the other too fast for him to turn and beg her to stop.

The crescendo pushing him higher into the frozen air squealed to a sharp rest as the up and down light bouncing along Jughead's knee covered the entire leg, and the steady drumming of boots in the snow ended with a sharp note of shock at his hip.

Betty's hand pressed against his back, crushing him.  
Now, Archie was sure, he wasn't breathing.

Not when Betty was curled over his shoulder, missing his eyes by an inch so her own could blow wide, gaining the shiny quality he never wanted to see in them.

She didn't fall to her knees until she was at Jughead's side.

There was a slight hesitation – her hands floated above his own that was locked around Jughead's arm – enough that she even spared him a glance, flooding his senses with her chattering teeth, trembling lip, and wet lined eyes instead of the reassurance he was searching for, and before he could work out half of something, _anything,_ for her, Betty collapsed over the boy below.

Archie pulled back his tongue as the blonde locks fell like a curtain over the dark mess of bangs while her ice like fingers brushed his own pressing around for the jaw line while he struggled to hold the limp neck steady.

From his ears, only the breathing of two was beating rhythm into the quiet. His hand gripping tightly around Jughead's sleeve moved to latch onto Betty's wrist that was lying flat over the denim jacket's left chest pocket. Her hand re-positioned and grasped around his own, holding him still, telling him to wait, telling him to hope.

 _Archie's wrong. Betty's right._

If things could be normal one last time. This was it.

Her hand went slack in his, then her whole being.

A buzzing was vibrating over his knees, crawling up into his mind.

 _She hadn't. There wasn't. Jug was…_

" _B-_ Betty he's…"

 _He couldn't._

"He's breathing."

Something shot hot sparks of life into his mind, yet he couldn't reroute from the previous suffocating thought. Only a gagging pause left his lips before he could wrap attention around the bright shining eyes peering back at him.

"He's…?"

Betty vigorously wiped the stray tears that left tracks across her cheeks and nose.

"Breathing. Not great, it's shallow and hard to hear, but yeah. " The arm rubbing circles over her red rimmed eye shifted down to splay fingers along the pale cheek of their friend. His own hand returned to tighten around the thin material of Jughead's shirt. "He's breathing."

Her certainty let him breathe too and, in the newfound calm, his hand quivered the sense of a steady thumping in the chest below to his rewiring mind.

"Archie." Betty commanded his attention although she never took focus away from Jughead. The pause of relief ended and left him in the still unfinished present, with Jughead unconscious on the snow covered ground, and Betty, steadily slapping the boy's cheek. Calling out Jughead's name with the last bit of strength she could muster.

She paused. "We need help," she began, letting the words tumble in a breathy mess. "He's not waking up – that cut on his head – he may have concussion and I don't know but there's something wrong with his breathing, like there's this whistling sound- it's just so _low_ like he's struggling, and we don't even... he's been out here in the cold like this all night!" Betty's words sent him spiraling between trying to meet her eyes and following her hands that, as if she was frightened of breaking an injured baby bird, danced around the unmoving form of their friend, barely making contact. "We- we need to do something!"

Here she was shivering, holding back hysterics, and still taking the lead when he was floundering. Betty was grappling with the reality lying in front of them while he continued to sit like a rotting corpse phasing through the scene.

Betty needed him.

Jughead needed him.

He needed to shift gears, shoulder the burden, and wake the fuck up.

His friends needed him.

It was a jolt, and it was enough to send his arm shooting forward to grasp Betty's wrist. Another rant, that was just starting to brim with fresh tears, halted.

"Okay." Her ponytail flicked up revealing her crumbling face. "Okay. Let's just- we'll figure out what's wrong with him later, for now we get help." She nodded curtly, detracting her shivering hand from Jughead's cheek. "I'll carry him to the road. You call my dad, tell him to call an ambulance and then come help." Betty responded with an affirmative and a quick back pocket search for her phone. In return he went to work with rearranging the limp body of his friend.

The thought crossed his mind to carry Jughead on his back. A flicker of the broken tree branches, flattened bushes leading to the bloody forehead, and hitched breathing creaking from Jughead's opened jaw - now detectable as he pitched forward to prepare for the new weight - caught the idea from becoming an action. Moving Jughead as he was, so drastically, would probably be a move he would regret.

He'd keep Jughead in the same position and move gradually if he could. There was an anxious tug in the back of his head, a reminder to handle with care, because he hadn't even considered internal injuries had he? The thought brought nausea that he was forced to ignore with the burn in his biceps.

An arm under the knees, a hand along the back stitching of the damp denim jacket, and Betty offering a hand to aid him, Archie pushed weight onto his feet, folded Jughead against his chest and pushed up.

He was met with instant regret.

Betty's hand caught his pitch forward and fought to help him keep any balance while he reeled with guilt and fear from the harsh cry of pain in his arms that was slowly dissolving to a whimper and shudders.

A wet cough broke over his anxious movements to settle the body to the ground and away from the stupid move he just tried to pull. And if the locked trembling frame was any indication it was a stupid move that must have _fucking_ hurt.

Within a second Jughead was laid back in the snow and Archie backed away with fear of inflicting more damage, and because Betty was already there laying soft comforting touches around the pale and scrunched up face.

And were there tears leaking down the sides before Betty brushed them away?

Jughead's eyes fluttered open and Archie lurched forward again taking Betty's earlier approach of barely touching and forced his hands into the snow instead.

"Juggie, it's Archie, you with us?" He asked, desperately searching the half-lidded eyes as they clenched shut into another expression of pain.

Then, a palm stroked Jughead's cheek and suddenly his eyes blew wide. Pupils large, blown round, lost with pain and confusion but clear in their search. Just a touch and he knew who to expect. They stuttered to an immediate stop when Betty was straight in his sight.

A shift to turn his neck and then barely a whisper of something recognizable.

"B- Bett...s," Jughead spoke, voice almost breaking with the sound before settling back with a deep exhale.

Betty followed after.

"Yeah, it's me, it's _me_ , Juggie, I'm here," she promised, cradling his head and continuing a slow caress along his jaw. "You're safe now, we've got you, okay? You're gonna be okay."

Jughead's breathing was louder now and the clear sharp stuttering it made brought Archie close, moving a hand to support the head now slipping free of the grey beanie. The touch flicked Jughead's eyes to his own and something swelled inside and nearly burst his seams open again.

"Ar- Archie?" He asked, still quiet, still small.

 _Shift gears. Keep it together._

A quick swallow and Archie worked the words out.

"Hey, man," he laughed, almost expecting a sob instead. "You scared the shit outta me you know?"

The tight prison of pain was still clutching the features of Jughead's face but a smirk layered over them and fought to take control.

"Yeah… well…" Jughead's chest shuddered with each word and Betty settled a hand there to brace him. "You kinda- scared the shit outta me." A sharp inhale. "When you tried to... bridal carry me," he exhaled with a rhythm that, under different circumstances, Archie knew, would have been a laugh.

It was quick to dissolve into a wince, though, and while Archie faltered from it, Betty was already there shooting a look between them that could easily categorize between chastising and a thankful prayer. Jughead's beanie finally tipped off his head as Betty ran her hand back into his hair.

"Take it easy, Jug," she hushed, continuing her gentle ministrations through Jughead's hair, careful to avoid the gash that Archie now realized ran back into the hairline. "Just... try to stay still and keep breathing."

From his expression Jughead was certainly trying to follow the advice but his breathing was hitching up in a way that did nothing but sound off alarm signals in Archie's head. The airy whistling from before was now overtaken by a steady beat of what could only be called a shallow squeak. Every inhale was like a balloon barely squeezing air out, or in this case taking any in, and with the quiet seeping in, Archie couldn't help but take note of the new rhythm.

The same time he was clutching a fist along to each of Jughead's breaths, that seemed to shorten with each beat, Archie felt a distinct whack against his wrist.

The weapon being Betty's cell phone.

Her tone held her usual power even with her focus pointed out of his direction. "Call 9-1-1, Jughead can't wait." Archie barely acknowledged the confused murmur leaving Jughead's lips –" _...9...1-1?"_ – his attention already sealed on dialing in the emergency number.

The dial tone rang eerily over the small huffs Jughead emitted and it's the mechanized sound gave him pause to register the patter of snow brushing by his sides. Archie didn't need to spare a thought before digging the phone into his shoulder and shrugging Pop's coat off to cover most of Jughead's lightly layered torso.

Betty re-positioned the oversized coat to lay an inch under Jughead's chin before giving Archie a grimace that he knew without the stress lines was as a sign of gratefulness. A click to silence broke over the static ringing of the phone but he worked quickly to ask Betty his idea of another move as, "maybe one of us should try to grab my dad," to which the jacket crinkled in Betty's tightened fist. "Even if an ambulance comes it could take-"

He drowned out as a low and almost robotic voice answered instead. "9-1-1 what is your emergency?" But his voice was stolen and he never got the chance to answer because in that moment Jughead clawed his thigh, choked on the A of his name, and began throwing up.

"Oh shit _, Jug!"_ He shouted, powering over Betty's screech of " _Jughead!"_ He gobbed over a mess of expletives as the concerned echo of the operator tried again. Sound was numbing pieces of shattering glass that exploded with every shuddering, wet, and continuous cough that ripped from Jughead's lungs.

Throwing caution and gentleness to the wind, Archie pulled Jughead roughly to his side just before his airway could be obstructed and clasped a hand around the clammy palm that was digging desperately against his leg. Somewhere, far off, a stranger's voice was urging him to calm down but only Betty's frantic calls, as she clambered to his side, and the faltering of Jughead's dry heaving filtered through.

"Jug! Juggie, please! I know it hurts just- just try to breathe," Betty's voice hitched in time to ever tremor ripping through Jughead's body.

Archie clenched his fingers around Jughead's.

A whine of a verbal static called into his ear.

"Sir, I need you calm down and to describe to me what's happening. Are you injured?"

His thumb pushed the phone flush against his ear in anticipation for his voice to move beyond a whisper but – Jughead was still choking for air even after spitting his stomach up with his bone crushing grip in Archie's hand that reminded him of a thousand movie scenes where a dying man held on with some inhuman last strength – it was just _too hard._

The strange voice kept begging for an answer, Archie begged himself to give one, and Betty with her jeans soaking through in the snow begged Jughead to keep breathing with her as his deep heaving continued to wither away to near silence.

"Please," he heard himself say as Jughead's eyes glazed over and focused on a point beyond Betty's head. "It's my friend, he..." Each weakened huff from Jughead cut off prematurely as if the use of his lungs was breaking something inside.

As the virtual stranger spoke something unintelligible with a speed that could never help stop Jughead from laying in unbearable pain, a tight pull was felt in the low part of his arm.

The pressure curled down until it rested over his wrist, sitting an inch from the interlinking fingers of his and Jughead's hand. A quick puff of air escaped his mouth when he followed the source to the pair of piercing green eyes, just barely filled with tears and red along the edges.

"Archie," she hissed with a harsh press of her thumb against his pulse. "Breathe."

He did.

"Tell the operator your name, that we're on Bucktail Road, and that we need an ambulance."

The order gave no time for discussion and Archie found himself rattling what he was told, only tripping over his words when Jughead's grip tightened along with a hitch in his throat.

Just as he finished and the sing song professionalism was rolling into a response – " _Alright Archie, I'm sending an ambulance your way. Can you tell me your friend's name and what happened to him_?" – Betty was there again pulling his strings, giving the words he was struggling for – " _Jughead, and um… we think he has a concussion but it's his breathing's… it's really bad"_ – all the while soothing Jughead with a hand braced against his forehead.

Archie swore Betty was working on a separate plane of existence. Another gobbled question bled across the phone and somehow Betty was already leaning down speaking to their shivering friend for the required answer.

"Jughead," she prompted and Archie shot a word for the dispatcher to wait. "Juggie, I'm sorry I know it hurts – helps coming – we just need to ask you something," Jughead's eyes shot open from their sealed grimace. Archie found himself leaning over and offering a, "take it easy Jug," along with abandoning his friend's hand to grab a coat covered shoulder.

A rattling cough cut from Jughead but a look of clarity painted across his face. The sound of agreement was gentle but Archie didn't miss the way his chest still buckled with it.

Betty wasted no time diving in for the kill. "Do you remember what happened, or who hurt you?"

A flash of something apologetic crossed Jughead's face and a chill of possible consequences for Jughead falling unconscious with a worse head injury than they previously inspected iced over his mind.

"Yeah…" Archie straightened up and passed Betty the phone to which she relayed information to the dispatcher. Jughead blinked back what now seemed to be hesitation, not a lapse in memory. "I got hit," he ended with a wheezing stutter.

"Well yeah, you got hit," Archie repeated slightly under his breath. "But do you know _who_? Somebody dropped you here, was it Chuck? We already know he was-"

Jughead pulled from Archie's grasp, sprawling on his back, looking more exasperated than in pain.

"No, I mean..." he said barely above a whisper, and they both ignored Betty's objection - " _Archie! Keep him on his side!_ " - as Jughead met his eyes and answered.

"...a c-car…"

"Wha-" Archie felt his mind sprint through the pounds of heavy snow to catch up. "Holy shit, wait Jug, you got hit by a-"

Jughead shot a hand across his sternum and hissed in a shallow broken breath.

"Arch- I can't," and in a flash Archie was there holding Jughead's head as he choked and started struggling for air. Up close a tint of blue was coloring the boy's lips.

"Betty, what's the word on that ambulance?!" He cried only finding an answer in the look of horror painted over her face.

"It's too long, they're saying the snow could delay them by half an hour!" Her volume turned shrill by the end. "Archie!"

"I know, I know!" He cursed, relaying options over his mind. Jughead was suffocating in front of them and the only professional help available was dragging its feet for a rescue. He was trying, really actually trying to keep some semblance of his mind focused on staying calm, focused on finding the best answer.

All he could summon was a black abyss of struggling breath cutting short and the rumbling murmur of his own pulse.

" _What the hell are you kids doing down there!"_

Betty dropped a series of tears down her cheeks and Archie felt himself choke out a verbal mess of relief when his eyes followed the holler to the figure of FP Jones scrambling down the frozen hill into view.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

I hope this was painful as it was enjoyable (angst is always a fun time for me) 3 And as always thank you for all the comments and kudos! I'd love to hear some feedback on this chapter, let me know what you think! (BIG thanks to raptorlily who screamed at me with every edit I made to this!)


	7. Downhill from Here

_Chapter 7_

 _Downhill from Here_

The shadowed edges slid away as he blinked once, twice, and then sluggishly rubbed his arm along his eyes. With a new sense of clarity, the dark outline of the couch slowly morphed into recognizable pillows as the last memory he had rang through his head.

 _He'd promised he wouldn't do this again._

Any of _this_ \- falling asleep when he only wanted to rest his eyes, crashing on the couch instead of an air mattress bed, waiting in an empty trailer for someone who wouldn't make it home.

It was a stupid thought, looking back now. All of it. But mostly the sleep thing.

Put your head down and you're out for the count. Wait around with a doggy bag of diner food as a poorly disguised excuse for visiting a parent who couldn't even find their way back before the crack of dawn and...well...

He should have expected the food to go cold.

Rolling to his side, Jughead dropped his hand to skim along the floor for the belongings he should have left there. A brush against the center rug told him he had gone too far and he retreated back, hand patting as it went, until he grazed the edge of his bag. With his face smushed into the seat of the couch he went about searching the pockets. He moved about the crumpled bag methodically, the far off kitchen clock ticking along to every inch his fingers shuffled. Besides that, sound seemed nonexistent.

Outside the trailer, the world had probably ended - no Serpent bikes revving or Sunnyside dogs howling - or he'd fallen asleep in another much quieter parallel universe. Even the Andrews' second floor was plagued by the late night dog bark or teenage speedster cutting through Elm's Street.

Just then, before his mind had fully flickered away from the stiff belly of floral cushions to the soft bounce of deflating air mattresses, his thumb hit the metal spiral of a notebook along with the plastic side of his phone case. It jolted him into remembering what he was even doing.

"Oh, shit-" Suddenly he was wide awake, pulling himself up, and bringing his phone to his face.

The screen blinked alive with a horrible time that had him groaning.

 _2:18 AM_

"Great. Fantastic," he muttered through his palm as it slid down his face to rest over his mouth. How long had he been with the Andrews' and already he was screwing things up? Not that Fred seemed like the guy who'd throw him back onto the street - _he wouldn't right_? Not when he knew how Jughead had been living? Even though Fred had done the same thing to his dad some years ago?

Denial did nothing but leave a sizzling burn up and down his sternum.

The time mocked him from the phone screen - now 2:19 AM - before he tapped into his messages, while reaching down to throw the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder. He stood, trying to ignore the ache in his knees and the need to crack his back, until he found himself with only his own last outgoing message to Archie, and with a notebook falling from his opened bag to the floor.

 _Hey gigolo, headed back from Pop's. You down for burgers tonight?_

In retrospect, it wasn't as funny as he thought it was - not to mention it was hiding a slight lie - but it had brought a stupid grin to his face while he waited at Pop's counter, three burgers sizzling over the diner grills.

Now it just left him feeling hollow. He turned to the notebook on the floor.

Science notebook, his eyes told him, as he blinked at the familiar black cover and a clearer memory that he had some kind of homework that he'd predictably forgot about. With one hand he made a grab for the thing and then struggled to shove it back into place while scrolling through his phone checking - _hoping?_ \- for one panicked message in response to a _it's 2am do you know where your Jughead is?_

Nope.

Just his own gigolo-Archie material from three hours ago.

He licked the film from the front of his teeth. Either the world really had ended everywhere save for the poorly heated den of his father's trailer or-

Jughead shoved his phone into his jacket pocket, checked that the strap of his bag was straightened and that the flap was closed, before stepping across the floor. And, _oh yeah_ , he recalled back teeth grinding, wasn't that homework some huge lab report due tomorrow that he didn't finish because he figured he'd do it with Archie up until the moment he drifted off on the couch and forgot that he even cared _because really what did it matter to anyone if he made it home or not_ -

The Pop's bags still sat at the edge of the round table.

He'd stalked into the kitchen, hoping to end the jumbling of his thoughts. Yet, just like when he'd dropped the bags there, a strangling tension was back in his throat. Clenching his jaw, keeping his breathing steady, he grabbed for the crumpled bag that held Archie and his smushed, less than edible, dinner. The other bag, his dad's bag, fell to the side. A swirling stain of brown leaked through the white of it, bringing a damp shadow onto the printed chock'lit shoppe logo.

The analog clock tsked at him while he stood undecided between the fridge and the front door.

His teeth played with the skin of his lip until he tore a piece away to swallow.

He felt his feet sinking into the slits of the kitchen floor tile.

All the while his phone remained still, the warm spot he'd made on the couch went cold, and the soggy bag did nothing but suggest that he stay.

When he'd walked his way across town to the trailer two hours earlier and found himself unsurprised at the missing truck outside, hadn't he reasoned that it was better? No one would notice he was here. Wasn't that what he wanted?

Because even with an out of place, obviously left by your son, burger bag, a stumbling hazy eyed man would probably miss it as sign of someone's lingering presence, because _he never did anything but think of himself to begin with_ -

"Whatever," he choked and the clock settled onto 2:23 AM. The next minute felt like a countdown for him to change his mind, so he didn't waste any time. His beanie and satchel were straightened and his phone patted deeper into his pocket. His Pop's bag hung in his hand by his thigh as he pulled open the door to the outside timeless town.

A frigid whip caught him in the face.

His eyes fought to open from the sting and when they did he was left blinded by the beginning of a white covering along every surface he could spot. Jughead peered across the trailer park. Just barely, he could hear the kitchen clock slur into a slower tick. Time really had been frozen it seemed. Iced over in a early autumn snowfall.

He felt his body lean back, considering _the_ idea - throwing the bags in the fridge, staying wrapped in the warmth of the trailer, sucking up and dealing with his father's arrival at dawn.

The wind swirled and snapped at him with tiny flakes of white. But some reasonable piece of him could already see that what awaited him on the _other_ side of town - a bare minimum lecture from Fred and early morning science homework with Archie who definitely didn't finish his either - it was better than the ritual with his father that awaited him here.

Yeah, the prospect of walking back wasn't bad at all.

Jughead shut the door.

.

.

.

Things had been going fine at first.

Albeit his nose had turned red and the hand clutching around his burger bag had begun aching from the cold before he'd even made it to Sunnyside's main entrance, but at least, ten minutes ago, there was barely an inch of snow dusting over the ground.

Now, his nose was probably a stark purple and each step he took swished more and more snow forward into his path. Funny how a town supposedly accustomed to an early snow seemed to have all but shutdown for an October storm, which he'd personally label just short of being a blizzard. Besides the crunching of his feet and the occasional splat of a snow from a nearby spruce tree, Riverdale was housing a quiet that could belong to only the dead.

 _Good line._

Jughead pulled out his phone to jot it down, careful that he was still walking in a straight line. One misplaced step and the frozen ground would put him out of his misery, or the eventual rickety town snow plow would roll him over if he wandered too far into the street… okay, yeah. Maybe he would have been better off taking main street back to Archie's. A sigh puffed from his chapped lips.

The wooded outskirts of Southside offered a shorter walk but the absence of sidewalks - courtesy of Riverdale's skewed neighborhood development - was definitely not a plus. Since strolling on blacktop was his usual method of travel, he hadn't considered adding snow to the equation - a lot of snow, too much snow, enough that he was slipping despite his cautious pace - or that snow would suck so much.

Being short sighted now had him ankle deep with a damp cold ache around the cuffs of his jeans. He'd originally considered hitting the air mattress as soon as he made it back - he'd thought of working on his homework but really that'd go nowhere this late at night - but now the idea of hot shower first was just as appealing.

Done with his writer's note and feeling the chill in his fingers he tucked his hand back into the warmth of his pocket. With the quick tapping off his thumb no longer filling his ears he found himself left with the sounds of his steps once again, along with a tinge of annoyance for leaving his headphones at Archie's house. He could have at least killed the walk back with some loud mind numbing song on repeat. He let out a snort.

It figured the one night when the town was devoid of life would also be the one time he'd leave his earphones behind because he thought he could observe it.

His chin tucked down as far as it could in the collar of his jacket, though it hardly did any good to keep his face warm. Already an icy sting was beating from his nose to the circles of his cheeks. It seemed he'd be observing the tips of his boots as they marched forward on an approaching yellow light.

Jughead blinked in realization and peered ahead to see the distant round yellow eyes of a far off car. It seemed all of Riverdale wasn't entirely dead.

A part of him - probably the over analytical and hungry for the peculiar part - couldn't help but feel like a car out on the road at - he tilted his phone from his pocket to check the time - 2:40 in the morning was _a bit_ disconcerting. His mind swam with quick half concocted imaginings of Blossom owned black cars riding across town doing murder related business through the night, though they didn't last long. The distant car was fast approaching despite the layering snow - or maybe that was just because he was walking so slow - it wasn't hard to see that it was anything but a Blossom-mobile.

Besides, even if it was a Blossom crime lord or Jason Blossom's very killer in the front seat the cold cutting into his skin was enough that Jughead would have turned and walked the other way. He wasn't eager to live out a scene from any murder mystery books in this weather.

He kept his head low and his steps as far from the middle of the road as he could as the car blew by him.

The yellow glow that had spread wider and wider over him and the road was blinked out of existence the moment it passed. Jughead felt the tension he'd worked up in his own shoulders leave and half of a sigh blow dramatically from his lips. The eyes of some stranger watching him walk was somehow worse than a driveby imagined crime-man and it had got him stupidly worked up.

The discomfort made him itch for something and his thoughts drifted to the loose fries still packed in his takeout bag. _Cold food is still food_ he mused with a smirk playing on his lips. He'd definitely said something like that to Betty early at Pop's - which had earned him a new crinkled, cute face of disgust when he finished off her cold diner food. There'd been so much of his usual nonsense that he'd almost forgotten to remember that reaction and poke fun at her later.

The blush of his girlfriend's cheeks and the spinning frayed ends of her famous ponytail blew through his mind and Jughead found himself paused in untwisting his diner bag. A new itch was in his fingers and pit of _shit I forgot to text her_ in his stomach that drew him to his phone and the message he should have sent Betty hours ago until he froze, suddenly distracted.

Behind him, not far in the distance, a high and long squeal circled through the night. Jughead whipped around to see if what he was guessing was already right.

About two houses down the street, back where his tracks were already filling with white, the headlights he thought were gone from the night were once again facing him. He was just making out the black circle in the road that he knew indicated a spinning turn when he heard an engine rev, and the car was speeding down the road again.

The logical part of him grappled for an explanation as the yellow lights grew closer and closer and seemed to angle towards _him._

 _Went the wrong way. Just a jock doing donuts in the road._

But some primal, fearful part screamed louder.

His legs jolted him off the road and into a pound of snow next to a crooked mailbox where he'd be out of the way.

But the whirring sound of tires didn't stop, they screeched and straightened until he _knew_ , his knees buckling just as the spread of yellow covered every inch of him like he was a deer in headlights. They were coming for him.

" _Get outta the fucking way Jones!"_

Jughead barely heard the crackling laughter over the explosion in his ears. His legs grew minds of their own and barrelled out of the way so he was facefirst in snow. Facefirst and _safe_ in snow.

" _Holy- sh- wha- th-"_ The words dropped as broken sounds from Jughead's mouth as he tried to stop himself from panting. He'd leapt a foot to the right and was sprawled on the ground gasping for air like he'd run a marathon.

No. Correction. He was sprawled on the ground, heart thumping like a hunted rabbit, choking on his breath, because some asshole tried to mow him down.

Already on his feet - hands trembling on his knees and breath hitching like he needed an extra lung - Jughead looked back to the scene he'd jumped for his life away from.

Steps away in the snow the Pop's bag he'd been holding lay more or less undamaged between him and, what he could only assume were, pieces of the mailbox he'd been standing next to. It's murderer, a grey vehicle of some brand Jughead never cared to know, was spun out a few feet away, rear and front lights blinking in what looked like agony.

Jughead knew a good time to run and this was it.

He hardly got a step away before voices were screaming at him from all sides. The closest, the passenger window, got his attention first, or rather the familiar face did.

"Watch where you're going, Jones! I don't feel like cleaning you off my car tonight!" Some obnoxious jock Jughead could hardly see and couldn't even place a name for taunted from the driver's side. The babble was easily dismissed as he could focus on nothing but the tight jawed face through the open passenger window.

Even in the dark he could tell, Chuck was still sporting the black eye he had given him.

Somehow, dying at the hands of some testosterone diseased jock who'd done nothing but harass not just him but _Betty -_ and every other girl at Riverdale High - did nothing but flare him from frightened to absolutely pissed.

"Yeah and I'm sure you'd like to try cleaning attempted murder off your record too!" Jughead hissed, feet backing further up the property in which he had stumbled. "I mean seriously, Chuck? Some guy decks you and you have to run him over to save your pathetic masculine honor- how come you don't see me running over every asshole on the football team?!"

Nameless sociopath-jock shouted something obscene that Jughead didn't care to hear yet Chuck's face, while sneering and slightly psychopathic, seemed to loosen around his eyes.

His hand came to rest outside the window on the door of the car.

"Just...stay outta the road, Jughead," was all he offered, as if he was extending an invisible peace offering to a five year old. Jughead ground his teeth so hard he didn't realize he'd caught a piece of his cheek until he tasted blood.

"Yeah sure," he answered tugging his phone from his pocket. "I'll make sure I do that _after_ I call Sheriff Keller about your murder attempt." Which he punctuated by waving his phone with a trembling hand before he started across the snow covered lawn. Chuck responded with nothing Jughead could hear, but his friend screamed like the damned with a repeated, "Don't even think about _,_ Jones! I swear I'll fucking-"

Not that he had any desire to listen or any actual intention of calling Keller. All he wanted was to put as much distance between himself and the smashed bits of mailbox littering the ground.

A plan made ten times easier as another voice joined the mix.

"What the hell is goin' on out there?!" A loud nasally, definitely belonging to the property owner, demand shrieked across the snow and Jughead knew this was a perfect time to go.

Despite the thick sounding thumping that had taking residence in his chest and was echoing dizziness into his head, he kept his balance and rushed around the front of the car to steer clear of the raging old man stomping down the driveway. His eyes flickered on the dented side of the hood and the single remaining headlight that flashed weakly at him for just a second before he dashed away, phone still in hand.

"Hey you, get back here-!" Jughead pounded his feet in the deepening snow and kept moving. "You damn kids, I'm calling the cops!" Behind him, Chuck and no-name jock friend yelled over screeching tires that he guessed were stuck, spinning in a layer of snow.

Ahead was only black and white. The street long and never ending, covered in snow, seemed like the worst place to keep running to. Jughead twisted his head over his shoulder for a glance, the weakening headlight was blending into the shadowed curtain of the night as he sprinted away, and he knew - even if he wanted to believe in a better second option - that the run back to the trailer was just as far as the run to Archie's.

Righting himself, he continued forward, faltering over his own feet and nearly slipping in the middle of the road. Whatever speed he'd gotten from a burst in adrenaline was flickering out as a better awareness came over him. Particularly, the awareness of a dull ache in his ankle and how he needed to get the _hell_ out of the road.

Reduced to a speed walk - his ankle no longer aching but constantly throbbing - he shot a glance over his shoulder again.

Nothing but black. Not even a catch of light in the distance. He couldn't even hear an echo of anything in the distance. Though, he could still blame that on the remaining thumping in his head.

It wasn't like he wanted to take a risk with his usual shitty luck but he felt himself find a center of ease. Chuck and his goon weren't following him. He probably had that old guy to thank.

And also the snow, yes, thank god for the snow and it's ability to reduce car tires to unmoving ferris wheels.

A broken laugh jumped from his mouth like a cough and his hand, still wrapped around the cold cover of his phone, jumped up to grab the collar of his shirt with loose fingers. "Jesus christ," he rasped. "Jes-" He started coughing, air felt like the enemy in his throat and he pulled harder to loosen his shirt, his messenger bag straining around his neck. It was over, why was he panicking?

His broken sounds invaded the silence of the night and had him peering down the street, as if to see the vibrations bouncing in the dark. Through his haze of panic his mind turned over a map of Riverdale for comfort, thinking of the remaining streets he had to cross. A sharp jolt snapped him to life then as he wheezed.

If he headed from the yellow dotted line, hidden under snow, to the side of the road Chuck had come barrelling down to flatten him - the way the car was still facing when he'd ran - he'd have to cross the street _again_ to make a left onto the street before Elm's.

Nope. No. Not happening. He needed to stay out of the road. Starting _now,_ and for the rest of the night.

Jughead was already moving, his ankle pulsating and lungs protesting, towards the veil of white and woods across the street. Avoiding any future chance to be in the road seemed to ease the tension in his chest but as he shuffled out of the road, the weight of his phone in his hand by his suffocating throat made him think that maybe getting out the road wasn't enough.

Maybe it _was_ a good idea to call Sheriff Keller. Even if the guy was a prick, who hated his dad, hated the Southside, hated _him_ , wanted him arrested or-

Or _Archie_.

His fingers stopped clawing at the collar of his shirt and air snuck into his lungs.

 _He could call Archie._

He'd been so adamant in his own head. A check-in with his serpent father was something he _had_ to brush under the rug. He _had_ to keep it from Archie. Had to keep it from Betty too. Even after they'd offered their trust, accepted all his and his father's shit, helped lessen the load he'd been caring since the beginning of the school year, Jughead had still bought a third meal, gone to the trailer, and fallen asleep _alone_.

All on his own selfish accord.

His phone lowered to his field of vision. He went to punch in the number he'd memorized since Archie got his first cell phone in middle school.

It was a surprise, with the phone screen glowing under his chin, that his eyes caught it before his ears did.

A flicker from a broken headlight and a vague dented form.

He didn't have time to jump.

The impact hit him two seconds after the car clipped his side and threw him like a ragdoll.

Things like time spun from his control. Hot, piercing pain started and didn't end, _couldn't_ end, ripping from his middle and spreading to every end. A pop and hiss exploded inside his chest but he could barely hear it over the screeching that was fleeing somewhere far away.

Maybe the sound was him, but he could feel his lungs, pressed flat against his ribs, and any thought to scream was gone as the second impact zipped through his spine. Every nerve lit up with blistering ugly light.

He hadn't even known he was in the air, until he was hitting the ground.

Something crackled and a pathetic cried ripped from him. His arms fought to wrap around himself - his head, his chest, everything, _everything_ \- but he hadn't stopped moving. Death wasn't easy, pain couldn't just be searing it also had to slip.

He was slipping.

The ground was soft and angled, the white beneath him was no friendly cushion. It was yanking him down, making him roll.

Jughead's eyes squeezed shut. Gravity was unrelenting as he tumbled down the hill, bushes full of snow and jagged branches in the ground were unrelenting, all he could do was endure.

 _Please. Stop. Stop. Stop._

His head was still spinning down the hill, chest still screaming around his lungs, even when he slowed and slid to a stop. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes.

He'd stopped but it wasn't over. His body, every inch of his skin, bones, muscle - it _hurt._

Lying on his side, arms trembling weakly around his torso, Jughead pulled his legs towards his center. Weak pained breathes came out as he moved. " _Ngh- fck,"_ Jughead cursed, shaking as the cold seeped through his clothes into his skin.

Of course. Of course he had to be completely and utterly conscious. He'd been run over and he had to feel every second of it. Had to lie awake and aware as a fire ripped over his body and had him leaking tears.

His arms pulled around his jacket, his fingers dug towards skin. He tried to call out. " _N.. ugh..._ hel-" And faltered, slack jawed and wide eyed as he felt his body give. His chest was being stabbed, over and over and over again, a knife plunging from the inside and out, digging deeper every time he tried to work a noise out.

Every time he tried to _breathe_.

A faint idea was whispering to him and he curled tighter into himself, fighting to ignore the _huff_ , _huff_ , _whimper_ , _huff_ , _huff_ , _whimper,_ bleeding from his mouth. Something wet and rusty seeped along his forehead and dropped into his open mouth.

He shivered. Pain shot back at him for it.

Focus was hard on anything except the explosions going off along his ribs and inside his lungs. He tried to retrace his steps, recall what had happened, what was happening, what he could do, how to send his mind away and out his broken screaming body.

But pain was all he had to think on.

Along with that frightening idea.

Something worse than whatever was broken and falling apart inside him. Something he thought he'd shut inside the trailer almost an hour ago.

 _He knew._

He couldn't shake the thought away, but the snow was cold enough to sting was a satisfying distraction. It left an ache that he could get lost in, so he did just that. But as he let the cold suck, the black dotting the edges of his white filled vision, _he knew_.

 _No one was looking for him-_

Jughead pushed his face against the snow, eyes closed, body wrapped around only himself.

 _So no one was coming._

* * *

"So." Archie swallowed as he sliced the silence away with his own throat. "What's the plan?"

A step ahead of him, FP continued up the hill, not even offering him a glance; not that Archie expected him to.

"The _plan,"_ FP grunted, "is to get the hell out of here." He huffed and pushed forward without another word.

Whatever conversation Archie was hoping to spark alive was flickering dead.

His teeth gripped around his bottom lip until it felt like it was just a tug away from ripping off. Walking was hard enough with his stomach filling with dread, but now his mind was begging for a distraction. He couldn't take being left to the sounds of the frozen silence: hurried steps, shallow breaths, Betty's whispers, the low pitched moans from Jughead's mouth everytime FP pitched forward too quickly-

"To hell with it."

Archie's head nearly tore from his neck when it swiveled up at the the sound of FP's voice - a voice caught between sharp inhaling breaths. Archie pushed his legs to close in on FP's back, nearly tripping on Betty's heels where she was trekking at his side. Not that she paid notice, her attention glued to the head of dark hair dangling over FP's upper arm.

"Knowing this town-" FP cut off with a wheeze and suddenly faltered towards the ground, his knee bending painfully as he struggled to fight the hill's incline. Archie shot forward and grabbed FP's elbow, finding Betty's hand already there, keeping him steady.

Just over FP's shoulder, Archie could see the final line of maple trees before the road.

"They ain't comin'," FP muttered instead of a thanks.

The shadows of boiling rage that traced the lines of FP's face continued to do nothing but put Archie on edge.

He'd felt that slow twisting in his gut since FP had run to their side - _him shaking, Jughead struggling, Betty's chin dripping with tears_ \- collapsed to his knees, and - _with lips pulled together in a slight quiver, eyes locking shut, and curse slipping out_ \- shifted his arms under his son, to cradle his body - _like a lifeless corpse save for the weak moan and flutter of eyelids that came in response_ \- and then finally stood.

Archie had watched, his body frozen minutes behind his screaming brain as Betty had jumped up to help FP as his arms quaked under Jughead's dangling legs.

" _I've got it,"_ he'd said to her. " _I've got 'im_."

Somehow, Archie hadn't been convinced.

And he still wasn't, including whatever _plan_ the man was concocting.

With the road coming into view and FP fighting every step he took up the sharpest incline, Archie got over whatever intimidation the man thought he was sending out and went to place a steady hand on FP's back.

Until Betty beat him to it.

"No shit," Betty huffed, tugging FP forward. "That was obvious when they went from thirty minutes to telling us to wait an hour." Archie found himself pulled along with his hand still trapped at FP's elbow - not because Betty's eyes had turned back to meet his and flare with a single order: _move_.

"Just knowing it doesn't help us- doesn't help Jughead-" she broke off, sucking in a deep breath. "We've got to do something about it." FP stayed quiet, even as Archie snuck around to his other side and grabbed his shoulder. Archie's kept his mouth closed too. His throat too busy burning as he worked down a dry swallow. Jughead's limp feet were close enough to bump his chest with every step.

"Mr. Jones," Betty cut in again her voice shallow as they all pushed up another step. Archie looked straight ahead and, like the line of the horizon, he could just make out the flat of the snow covered road. "The truck- did you…?"

If a man could sound more at his limit, then Archie couldn't imagine it after the wheezing hiss that cut through FP's teeth. And as if it couldn't get any worse, another quiet whine slipped from Jughead as FP's arms shook.

"Damnit! No," FP croaked, "The truck's back-"

Archie felt his teeth clack together. "With my dad and the Sheriff," he hissed out. His hand clenched around the collar of FP's jacket, tight enough that anymore could choke him, because they were at the end - him and Betty barely pulling FP with will alone to beat the sharpest incline before flat ground - and because-

Because he was trying so damn hardto blame FP.

He'd gotten good at it lately, he had to, when it was the one thing Jughead couldn't do - refused to do. It should've been so easy to blame the man - who's brow was layered in sweat that slid past his eyes which never stayed focused ahead for long, too weak to do anything but turn down to his arms when any shudder, any wheeze, any pain broke from Jughead in his barely conscious slump.

So easy to blame him when Jughead had started breathing again the moment he was held against FP's chest. When Jughead's eyes had slid open to catch his dad's face just as Betty smoothed Pop's coat over his trembling form.

" _I've got you, kid."_

" _It's gonna be okay, Juggie."_

He just couldn't.

"So then we get the truck."

Archie emerged from his own head as Betty's hit him like a slap to the cheek. "Get the truck, get to the hospital. That's the plan," she said, and FP let out a harsh laugh, as if to say what Archie was thinking.

 _It couldn't possibly be that easy._

But still, he nodded and then wrapped an arm around FP's back. " _I'll_ get the truck," he said and then held his breath and started yanking FP's arm, pushing his back, straining every inch of his body so they were past the final stretch, tumbling past the last row of trees into the flat, white, expanse of the road.

Despite the bubble Archie felt he had been trapped in, time had never stopped and neither had the snow. Not a hint of Archie's footprints remained on the street from before.

"I'll-" He panted, falling forward to rest a hand on his knees, the other on FP's shaking shoulder. "I'll get the truck, you guys stay here." Archie looked to Betty for a response but she was busy helping FP work himself down to sit on his heels. He found himself moving too, holding the coat over Jughead as FP shifted him upwards, his head rolling limply against the man's collar with a whine. Archie nervously worked the material between his fingers until FP took it to hold himself, keeping Jughead nearly completely covered from the falling snow, besides his hatless head.

The beanie in his back pocket, stuffed alongside Jughead's phone, felt as heavy as when Archie had put it there. He reached back to hold it in his hand, a move that didn't get past Betty. She gave him a questioning glance.

"And wait another ten minutes for you to come all the way back?" She asked and even in the dark, Archie didn't miss the shine in her eyes as they dipped down after a moment of quiet let the soft whistling heard from Jughead's throat. "No, no, we _can't_ waste anymore time. We should all go. Mr. Jones, are you sure you can't make it just a little further, or do you have your phone? We could call Mr. Andrews, he could meet us halfway," she pleaded while FP was already shaking his head, his hand rubbing up and down along Jughead's arm.

"Phone's in the truck and I'm not risking it," his voice dropped, "dropping him is gonna be a hell of a lot worse then another ten minutes in the snow."

Archie forced himself not to imagine _that_.

"Keys are in my pocket," He offered with a jut of his chin and it clicked that FP was talking to _him_. "Get the truck, and get right the hell back, if Fred's not there call him on my phone, don't go dragging your feet for the rest of them. They're probably still searching at the other end, they'll catch up." He turned to Betty then, her face tight around her lips. "He's tough Betty, I know you know that but… I think this is all we've got to work with, right now."

Betty didn't agree instead worrying her lip before offering, "He's breathing better since you held him up but there's still a thousand different things that could wrong. He got hit by a car, I don't - we don't know if something's broken or if he's bleeding internally… I.. I should have asked the 9-1-1 operator, before my phone died" she added then, face pale and lip quivering. "Even if they're not coming maybe we could have asked if there was something we could do to help or figure out wh-"

A choked noise interrupted just as Archie stumbled back, FP's keys jingling in his hands. Jughead, who'd been still in a half conscious state, was squirming back, attempting to pull himself from FP's grip.

"Hey, hey! _Jug_ , come on, it's _me_!" FP pressed trying and failing to fight Jughead's sudden burst of energy, "It's me, kid! Stop!" FP's voice broke. " _Jughead!"_

Archie abandoned the keys, shoving them into his pocket with the beanie, and found himself on his knees grabbing Jughead's wrist as it searched for purchased against the snow. "Jesus christ, Jug, for someone who got run over-" Archie didn't finish, Jughead's fist, breaking from his grip, caught the right side of his jaw. " _Ow! Shit!_ "

Jughead's eyes were blown, frantic, fucking terrified of whatever was keeping him from tearing away, and Archie, with a dull ache next to his chin, realized, with the time it took his vision to refocus in the black of the night, how dark it must of been for him.

Archie wasn't sure, but when Betty crawled next to him, her hands cupping Jughead's face, bringing him down, he thought that she must have realized it too.

He took Jughead's hand, now groping sadly in the snow - whatever energy he'd gotten while resting in FP's arms, already gone - and held it tight. A series of coughs rattled through Jughead before he deflated and fell heavily against FP's chest, his fingers just barely curling over Archie's as he did.

Betty's thumb rubbed something wet from Jughead's cheek that Archie nearly missed before it caught a small flash of light.

"It's okay, Juggie, it's just us," he found himself saying just as Betty added, "Your dad's here, you're safe."

Archie peered up, FP seemed like he was fighting to get something out of his throat.

Jughead blinked, and the light catching on the wet line on his cheek started to grow. Spreading across his face.

"Huh…" Jughead mumbled, looking every bit exhausted as he did alert. He was looking at him, like he was processing for the first time that Archie was actually _real_. Like all those minutes before were a dream.

"Yeah," FP said like it was a sound he barely got out, "we're here, kid."

The sound of tires flattening snow broke through the silence then and the light that had been filling the space around them became apparent. Archie tore himself from Jughead to the source and found his view blocked by Betty, no longer looking at Jughead, her ponytail facing him as she looked down the road. The outline of her head painted in a constant flashing of reds and blues.

" _You found him?!_ "

 _Sheriff Keller,_ Archie thought, just as FP said it.

The harsh slam of a door followed in the air but he could barely see the figures coming towards them. His vision blurred with the swirling colors as he stood until he could make out just a single shadow as it jogged around the police cruiser hood.

But when the face did come into focus the corners of his eyes burned.

"Dad," he croaked.

Fred took two slowing steps until Archie could clearly see he was looking nowhere but Jughead at the center of their group, who was shuddering with half-lidded, confused eyes.

And then Fred was surging forward. His hands dipping to reach where FP had Jughead cradled. Behind them, another car skidded to a stop while Sheriff Keller, his movement paused in the center of the road, looked on with something like horror across his face.

Archie felt Betty dip against his side then and watched with numbing disbelief as FP was hauled up and Fred turned to them.

"Come on. Time to go."

.

.

.

He kept a steady hand on Jughead's shoulder while Jughead kept a loose trembling hand by his knee.

Archie pulled back to give Jughead another once over. Pale and covered in a fine sweat Jughead's head was tilted back into the cushioning of the car seat with his eyes tightly shut. Betty's hand snuck over from the otherside to press softly against Jughead's stomach, a reminder for him to breath. This had been the routine for the past ten minutes as the three of them sat smooshed in the back of Sheriff Keller's police car.

"Fuck," Jughead cursed, leaning over to roll his head closer to Betty's. Archie squeezed his shoulder. "Hang in there, I think we're maybe two minutes away," he offered, sliding a glance to the front seat for the two men to correct his time estimation.

They said nothing. Betty however did, as she pushed Jughead back into a straight position, a sad expression on her face, that Archie figured meant she didn't really want to.

"You said it's better when you sit up straight," Betty reminded him, her hand rubbing a soothing circle across Jughead's chest. Jughead cringed and she froze, moving her hand slightly down, away from his ribs. "Better, but still like someone's stabbing my in the chest," he huffed. "Can't I just-" another shallow fight for an inhale "sleep... 'til we get there?" His eyelids fluttered dangerously.

"No." Three voices, scolded, his, Betty's, and one which Archie realized was coming from the front seat. FP had turned around to peer over the passenger seat.

"You've done enough sleeping on that concussion," FP replied before turning back to the front.

Archie felt the limp hand at his side nervously skim along the lining of the carseat.

"I..."

"Stop talking Jug," Betty ordered lightly and with that the nervous twitching hand stilled. Or with Betty brushing the hair from the gash on Jughead's forehead it did. Archie dropped Jughead's shoulder from his grip, moving instead to clasp his hand.

"Christ…" Archie startled slightly as Keller muttered Keller under his breath, from the front seat. He could just make out Keller looking back at them from the rear view mirror, a strange mix of stoic and anger swirling in the reflection of his face. Though that could have just been the mix of lights from outside - faded red and blue bouncing from the police car to the neighborhood and back, along with the yellow tint of Pop Tate's headlights that were following close behind them. Where his dad was following close behind.

"Can't believe haven't gotten the plow out yet- no wonder they couldn't get an ambulance out here," Sheriff Keller complained, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, while Archie tightened his around Jughead's stuttering grip. Not that Archie disagreed, the amount of snow, and lack of plows was, yes, bullshit, but the flare of anger in his chest didn't rear at that.

"It wasn't _this_ bad when we first called, they didn't even _try_ to get anyone out here to help," Archie shot back, to no one in particular, though Keller seemed to take it as directed towards him.

" _Hey_ ," Keller answered harshly, but Archie kept himself sitting tall, not backing down. "The only reason Fred and I found you in the first place was because the dispatcher - who _you_ hung up on - got the call to me." Betty made a noise of protest.

"We didn't hang up, the phone died," she argued. "It was almost too little too late. They couldn't give us a straight answer for an arrival time or the fact that they practically _lied_ about an ambulance coming? We get snow like this every year, since when does Riverdale General just give up on people when the weather gets a little bad?!"

"Your damn right, Betty," FP agreed with a harsh whack against the car door. Though Keller held his tongue before he answered. Archie kept focus on his grip around Jughead's hand.

"Those are good people you're talking about, Betty. Don't go blaming them for things they can't control. I guarantee they were trying to get to you, they just couldn't beat the storm."

"And I don't suppose you'll consider blaming the _right_ people then."

Archie felt the temperature drop. A small huff like squeak came from Jughead - sounding maybe like _"Dad"_ \- but Archie found, that for the first time, had no absolutely no problem with FP going off.

It seemed Betty had the same idea and distracted Jughead with a soft touch along his face, whispering something to him, Archie couldn't hear.

"FP, this can wait," Keller said.

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," FP shot back.

Keller sighed and spun the wheel, finally, ahead Archie could make out glow of Riverdale General. FP unbuckled readying himself at the passenger door, and added a persistent drumming to the air with his fingers as they rested on the handle. "You heard it from Betty and Archie, and you heard it from Jughead you can't say he's not in his right mind, kid knows what happened to him and said so - It was Clayton's boy."

Keller gave as a weak, obviously annoyed sound. Seemingly he was tired of hearing this.

 _Good_.

Archie tightened his jaw. Maybe he'd get so tired he'd actually _do_ something about this. Though apparently Keller wasn't ready to relent yet, his refusal to give an indication that he intended to do anything about Chuck - and Mat? Mike? Archie wasn't sure of the name but from Jughead's bare minimum description he knew it was Chuck's Greendale friend. Reggie hung around with him sometimes too.

Whoever was behind the wheel Archie could only hope that they would rot.

Another seat belt unbuckled - Betty's - and Archie followed suit, waiting as the police car wailed a siren as it pulled into the hospital lot. Behind them, Pop's headlights followed right after.

"Look, FP, it'll be taken care of, but _after_ your son is strapped to a stretcher and in the damn hospital. Right now, that's my main concern."

"Well I know you, like everybody else, has their hang-ups about the Southside," FP reminded him with a hiss and then slammed his fist against the door. "But there better be _some_ justice in this Keller! I don't care what you think of me - I've even turned a blind eye to the shit you're always pulling on our side of town - but if you don't do right by my son after _this_..."

Archie didn't look up to see what was breaking in FP's eyes.

Keller spun the car sharply, the wheels hissing with protest in the heavy snow, and lined them parallel to the curb of the emergency room entrance. The lights inside were minimum and at best dim, and it occurred to Archie that, while he'd been to the hospital before, he'd never been _here._ This place that felt heavy with implication with just the glowing red of it's huge "ER" sign outside.

There was a moment's pause and Archie saw his dad emerge from the car behind them, along with Pop who immediately crossed the pavement to run inside. FP's door opened then, the cold air whipping in, and just when Archie thought that was it, they'd go inside and Keller would escape without even a half assed excuse, the man found his words.

"FP, I promise you - as a public protector of this town and as a _father_ \- I. will. handle. it." Keller glanced back into the mirror before adding: "I'm going back to the station to check out the car, I've still got the kids detained there - they're not leaving anytime soon so just, worry about your kid, and let _me_ take care of _them_."

Archie, felt the hand in his tremble, and he turned to see Jughead's face a second away from crumbling.

"Jug-" he tried but Jughead shook his head, face scrunching, and air whistling from his mouth.

"I'm holding you to that," was all FP said, before he was out of the car and moving to open Betty's door. Keller whipped around and Archie was about to say something until turned to Jughead.

"I'll be back and I'll be expecting the full story from you." Jughead gave a halfhearted nod, that ended with him leaning into Archie's side. Keller's lined forehead of professionalism slipped, "You hang in there, alright?"

"Mm..." Jughead replied just as the car door opened and FP grunted.

"Time to go, kids."

Betty turned to Archie and Jughead before slipping outside the opened door for FP to take her place. "Be careful," she added as FP ducked into the car and scooped Jughead back into his arms, just enough to pull him out.

Archie checked for Jughead's beanie in his pocket and grabbed Pop's coat from the floor before scrambling after them, finding FP gently lowering Jughead into a wheelchair - " _easy, easy_ ," he soothed as Jughead's breath hitched - that he guessed his dad and Pop had brought over.

"Archie," Keller called to him, right as his fingers stretched back to shut the door. "Tell your dad not to worry about the trucks." Keller paused, flattening his lips. "And... have him call me if anything changes." With the sound of Jughead's wheelchair rolling away, Archie wasn't sure if he nodded in time before he slammed the door. The police car lights continued to spin as Keller drove away and Archie followed Betty who was dragging her feet at the sliding glass door entrance, waiting for him.

Finally, they were inside after being trapped in an ass freezing snowstorm all night.

Though he hadn't expected a ghost town.

He barely had a moment to look over the waiting room, keeping a step behind Betty and Pop as FP and Fred wheeled Jughead to the front desk where a nurse was waiting.

But what he did notice was a single piece of life lying in the far corner. A wilted potted plant.

They were the only ones here.

Besides a cluster of empty wheelchairs lining the wall, the only thing he saw was an open door at the opposite end by the front desk where the nurse, a small older woman, Archie noted - with black hair and a round face that made his heart ache for some reason - was directing them.

"Right in here, the doctor and tech will be right in to help you get him on the bed," she said smoothly, seeming to step away to fetch whoever that was, but not before suddenly stepping between them - him, Betty, and Pop - with a look on her face like whatever she was going to say was unfortunate. Ahead of them, FP and his dad were intercepted by two men, dressed in all white, who led FP and Jughead into the room. Though Fred lingered behind, looking back at them.

"Since this is an urgent case I'm afraid we can't have this many people in the room at once, we'll need someone to sit in the waiting room, I'm very sorry."

Archie saw Betty's face drop three shades in color desperately trying to see into the room where Jughead had disappeared. "No, that's-"

He too felt a loss of words. After everything, after the last look of pain sealed across Jughead's face when they brought him inside and every minute he'd spent with his heart in his throat, they were just expected to wait.

"Archie, Betty, you two go in."

Archie startled, his dad now at the nurse's side, slipping to take Pop's coat that he'd forgotten was still hanging over his arm. Though it was only when Fred handed it to Pop that Archie realized _Pop_ was the one who had spoke.

"I still need to move my car- and," he flashed a small smile, "just wouldn't feel right if you two weren't in there with him, after everything."

"Thank you, Pop," Betty said before stepping past him.

Archie choked and couldn't say anything, simply stepping back into the room as he heard his dad thank Pop.

He almost bumped into Betty where she was halted in the doorway, looking straight to the hospital bed where Jughead was laying, a wire on his hand, oxygen mask eclipsing his face, and with - what was the reason for Betty and now his frozen state - his shirt and jacket already off. He'd suspected something bad, with Jughead's pain directed towards his chest but...

Jughead's left side, the entire square of his chest, looked like it had been splattered in purple and red dye. As if someone had slammed him directly with a sledgehammer.

 _Or a car_.

Now, it felt real.

In the corner of the room two nurses, or rather, one nurse and one doctor, Archie realized, getting a closer look at their attire, were busying themselves with various machines and a metal cart as he and Betty approached the bed. The same side where FP was clenching the corner of Jughead's pillow, hand barely brushing the top of Jughead's head.

Archie hung back towards the foot of the bed, letting Betty slot herself next to FP and take Jughead's hand. Though before she did, it raised slightly from the bed, like an unfinished attempt at a wave. Jughead's eyes blinked as if in slow motion at him and Archie guessed that's what was trying to do. The mask on his face, which was filling the room with the whirling sound of air, not giving the courtesy to be able to talk. Though Archie figured that the swelling and bruising on his chest was mostly responsible for that.

"Hey, Jug."

Jughead responded with a huffed but recognizable, "Hey." Archie tried not to let his eyes wander from his friend's face, down past his collarbone where those ugly bruised patches lay.

Betty was the one to finally ask, "What're they doing?" Her attention on the doctor, as he approached and swabbed Jughead's chest with a cloth that, by the smell, was probably full of alcohol, or something just as strong.

Archie felt a hand rest on his shoulder and turned to find his dad, brushing by his back, making his way to FP.

"Your friend is suffering from a pneumothorax." The doctor, answered, pulling on gloves and taking a needle syringe into his hands. He pushed the top down to release the air inside and Archie felt his own lungs empty. He had to catch his balance on the metal railing of the bed. "We're going to be inserting a tube on his left side to hopefully alleviate the air trapped we believe is trapped there."

"T- that's," Archie stammered, looking for someone to help him catch up. Betty's head was turned away focused on Jughead who was looking increasingly unaware, like he was already drifting off. Luckily his dad seemed to catch his confusion.

"It's a collapsed lung," Fred answered, and Archie saw FP drop his face into his hand. "Explains why he was having such a difficult time breathing...did you give him some kind of pain medication?" Fred asked looking towards the doctor who was moving back to cover Jughead with a small blue tarp. In the center of it was a hole that showed only a small circle of Jughead's skin. Things were swirling in the room then.

The in and out hiss of oxygen, the now apparent beeping of a heart monitor, the overhead buzz of the fluorescent lights above the bed. _Was he the only one who thought things were moving too fast?_

"Yes, we gave him an anesthetic, though he's probably going to feel some major discomfort." A small knife was in the doctor's hands. This inside of Archie's stomach was spinning. "We're going to start with an incision here and then insert the tube here," he continued now speaking to the young looking nurse at his side.

Archie turned away the moment the knife approached the skin.

Next to him, he heard Betty murmuring, her face hovering just above Jughead's, their hands wrapped around each other, their knuckles turning white and from behind him, where FP and his dad had stepped away, he saw FP with his head to his knees, sitting in the sole chair of the room.

"I swear Fred, I'm getting my shit together after this," he sniffed. "It's a wake up call. Hell, it's- it's..."

Archie stood, unbalanced between the two scenes, until there was a hiss of a tube and heard Jughead steadily start to breathe.

.

.

.

.

Things moved quickly after that.

Despite his own discomfort at the plastic tube sticking out from under Jughead's skin, which ran off the bed into a weird looking box,he was slightly amazed by how well the thing had worked.

Though he still refused to look at it for too long.

He settled on the analog clock on the wall instead.

 _6:45 AM_

Within an hour of them entering the ER, having Jughead stabbed with a tube, hooked up to an IV, and changed into a set of hospital pants - the shirt excluded probably because of the wired patches they'd laid on his chest and the freaking _tube_ sticking out of him- Archie was actually considering that Jughead looked _better_.

"You look like shit, Arch," Jughead croaked out, pulling the oxygen mask from his face _again_. He tried to place it besides him on the pillow where Archie had just laid his beanie. A visible dried stain of blood was on it's curled edge and Betty had just promised to clean it herself when she got the chance.

A light flutter, almost near hysterics grew in Archie's chest, like he was going to laugh until he cried or just cry.

"Thanks," was all he could respond, and then dropped back into the wooden chair that had been pulled up besides the bed. "Though I could say the same thing about you, Jug."

A slight smirk tugged Jughead's mouth.

"Don't encourage him," Betty scolded from her own chair on the opposite side, untangling the oxygen mask from around Jughead's face. "You should really keep this on. It'll help as the pain medicine wears off." She hooked the mask back onto the machine by the bed and Archie caught the bit of white bandage sticking out from Betty's palm.

She'd asked for it after Jughead had insisted. Archie had too, afraid of the scratches on her hands being infected when he'd caught a glance at them - and he tried not to pry about why they looked so different from the cut he'd imagined she would have after cutting her hand on the mailbox pieces from earlier like she said.

Not that he was going to ask about it. Not with the look she'd been wearing since the nurse had wrapped her hand.

 _And not when it seemed like he was the only one in the room missing something again._

Jughead sunk deeper into his pillow. "I'll... put it on… when my dad comes... back in," he spoke slowly, his chest moving with the weight of every word and the air required.

The room had been vacated, besides the three of them. FP being pulled off by a nurse to fill the documents they'd originally let him skip, Pop still in the waiting room probably waiting for his dad - who had gone to call his mom. Let her know why he'd be late picking her up. And also…

To call Alice Cooper, and tell her what the hell was going on, much to Betty's dismay.

Archie sighed itching for his own phone - which was still dead and heavy in his pocket next to Jughead's. He needed a distraction, from the purgatory of waiting and quiet that they were stuck in.

Jughead sighed too, and Archie noticed Betty now working her fingers through his hair, moving them around the bandage on his upper forehead.

 _That_ was another reason he wished he had a screen to look away at.

Jughead and Betty had been, _Jughead and Betty_ , for the last thirty minutes since everyone had left.

Except, with an obvious tension between them

He was starting to wonder if it was _him_. It sort of felt like they didn't know how to act when he was near, maybe afraid to treat him like a third wheel? He wasn't sure of _that_ specifically, but he was sure of the had a painful look of guilt over Betty's face and the expression hanging over Jughead's face. The same one he wore when FP had fought a sob and hugged him, nearly crushing his chest tube.

Archie cracked his fingers, and thought for a moment he'd have to be the one to break the air.

Until, Archie assumed, Jughead tried to chuckle. Though it never made it past a soft exhale.

"You know...I swear, this wasn't a ploy... to get out of going to homecoming with you."

Betty's face shrivelled with the saddest smile he'd ever seen her wear.

"I never thought it was."

The hand that had been swirling patterns along Jughead's hairline slowly slipped down to cup his cheek. Archie wanted to interrupt them. An irrational part of him wanting to chime in and reassure the both of them, but the scene had him holding his breath and straightening in his chair. He nearly missed the whisper from Betty's mouth as she brushed Jughead's face with her thumb.

"I'm sorry."

 _He was missing something between them._

Jughead didn't miss it.

"What? Why're _you..._?" Jughead's shoulder lifted from the bed, bringing a crease of unsuspecting pain across his face as he tried to turn her way. Archie reached forward to keep his friend flat against the bed, but _of course_ , Betty beat him to it.

Archie pulled his hand back as Jughead settled back, Betty's fingers grasped tight around his bare shoulder. The air between the three of them was tight, and he felt himself struggling to breath - because it was really just the two of them. He was suddenly very much the third wheel.

 _Somehow he felt okay with that._

But this was probably a good time to pay attention to the different colored lines of Jughead's monitors or spit an excuse about needing to see his dad, before him and Pop went to get the truck. So when Jughead's hand snaked its way up to clasp around Betty's bandaged plam, he darted his eyes away to focus on his knees and to wipe _his_ palms against his jeans.

 _Somehow, he had the feeling that if he tried to leave now, or made any sound at all, they'd catch him, and he'd majorly mess things up._

In the seconds of silence that followed the worn denim on his thighs soaked the sweat from his hands that never ended - seemingly impossible to wipe clear - while Archie wondered, worried, if _anything_ was going to be said or that maybe he'd made the wrong call to sit still and they were actually waiting for him to-

A croak - from who he couldn't decide - that teetered on a sob caught his ear. Archie couldn't fight his own eyes as they peered up.

Not that they noticed.

Locked in a muddled embrace - Betty's body held an inch from Jughead's bandaged, wired, and tube ridden chest as she dipped her entire weight into Jughead's shoulder where she had buried her head. The hospital bed groaned but Jughead held silent, his own hand, shaky and lined with the link to his IV, fought some invisible force for only a moment before it collapsed against her back. The fingers splayed weakly, soothing upwards to brush below her neck until - with some strength Archie didn't think Jughead had - he pulled her against him.

Okay. _That_ was his cue.

Pushing himself to his feet with all the stealth and quiet he could muster - which was not much as his heel nearly fumbled across some unknown medical cord - Archie crept along the metal frame of the bed until he was across the room, in the hallway, and then finally, shutting the door.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

First, thank you so much to raptorlily who never stopped supporting me and a special shout-out to leigh3114 on tumblr who gave me the final push to finish this chapter. While I never expected this chapter to take so long I'm incredibly proud with how it came out in the end. My last two semesters were rough, and I just couldn't find it in me to work on any projects besides short one-offs, which is hysterical to me because this whole fic was written for this hospital scene. I was inspired last year to write this when I found myself driving my dad to the ER at 3 in the morning and funny enough I was inspired AGAIN to finally finish this because we had to bring him to the hospital AGAIN this year (don't worry he's fine). It seems I could never truly escape keeping the old.

But anyway! I would just like to thank everyone who supported this story and myself in its unexpected hiatus. Every comment, favorite, and follow warmed my heart as I suffered in a science lecture class, so thank you _so_ much.

And yes, there's one more chapter but don't worry, it'll be out by this weekend.


	8. An Epilogue: Out with the Old

_Chapter 8_

 _An Epilogue: Out with the Old_

 _He was lost, his mind drifting in and out with every bit of air he took. And still, the familiarity that wrapped around him was almost too recognizable._

 _Wide open hands under the bends of his knees. Hot breath against the split of his head. A shadow along a jaw, a quake in the muscle, a deep grating voice he was always desperate to hear._

 _It all built to a half-concocted image of a man who always raised his broken hopes for a fraction of a moment and then-_

 _And then he was tumbling down, back into darkness again, alone. Back downhill, back to reality. Back to where he was still lying in a frozen crumpled pile. Still waiting for no one to come because this was a Riverdale that -_

"What are you doing?"

Archie, whose hands were gently placed on the sides of the laptop bouncing on his knee, went scrambling to catch the device before it tumbled to the the tiled floor in his surprise. Catching it upside down in one hand with half his body hanging from the bed, he slowly turned to meet the squinting eyes of his friend.

"Were you reading my stuff?"

Archie cringed. Though, Jughead's tone was flat and without anything that sounded like he was pissed.

"… if I said it was good, would that make it okay?" Archie asked, settling the open laptop back in the space where the thin hospital blanket spooled around the pillows. He stood from the bed and shifted weight between his feet. Jughead blew a sigh upward that jostled his bangs, so Archie added: "You need help?"

"No," Jughead answered and then seemed to immediately rethink it. "I mean, 'no it wouldn't be okay." He leaned back to place a hand on the door knob he had just pulled closed. "But," a smirk appeared and Archie found himself returning it, "I think I'll get it over it as long as you don't tell the nurse that I fell on my ass in there." He jostled the door knob that led to the bathroom. Archie was already across the room before Jughead could finish with a mumbled, "But, uh, yeah, if you could just let me lean on you again."

"You fell?" Archie repeated, a panicky thump catching in his chest as his eyes darted over every inch of his friend. The pallor of Jughead's cheeks and forehead swelling had definitely improved with the full day he had spent resting, but his chest was still painted in angry splotches of red and purple. He was also carting around the patch of white gauze that was covering the hole for the (recently removed) tube for his lung.

While Archie hadn't heard anything from the bathroom, besides the sink and toilet flushing, he knew Jughead wasn't one for crowd drawing theatrics - _especially when it came to his own pain_ \- and he couldn't exactly miss how Jughead was curling around his injured side.

So he offered an arm. "Are you sure we shouldn't call the nurse?" He nearly lost his balance when Jughead took said arm and leaned all his weight against it. " _Jug_."

"I'm _sure_. It's bad enough having you drag my ass back and forth, but having some sixty year old woman hold me up while I piss? Yeah, I'd rather break my neck on the toilet." Jughead tried to contribute with a single leg as they shuffled back to the hospital bed. Archie had almost forgotten the sprained ankle in the wake of all the other shit Jughead was suffering with.

Once at the mattress, Jughead settled back against the pillows, a deep exhale leaving him. Archie pulled up his usual chair and gave Jughead his best Betty-look, which meant he ignored the joke and went straight back to the point.

"But you're okay?" he asked, watching Jughead's chest rise and fall, searching for a hint of pain across his friend's features.

Jughead shook his head and then turned to the machine that held an oxygen mask, "You collapse your lung _once_ …"

"I'm pretty sure _once_ is all it takes," Archie couldn't help the laugh that snuck out of him. "Especially when you could collapse it _again_ falling on your ass because you're too embarrassed to pee in front of an old lady that probably doesn't give a shit."

Jughead snorted.

"She's probably seen worse dude," Archie offered.

"Oh _wow,_ thanks for the confidence."

"I'm talking about... I'm not talking about your stupid dick!"

A real laugh broke from Jughead as Archie hit him on the arm while fighting the near hysterics that were bubbling up his throat.

"I think that pain medicine is finally going to your head," Archie chuckled, falling back into the chair.

Jughead opened his laptop that had folded shut in the fake tussle. A few coughs broke from his mouth and he rubbed his chest before he responded.

"Whatever I'm on I need more of it," he said with a hand carefully around his bruised ribs. It'd be another hour before he could have anymore medication. He turned to Archie with a ridiculously serious expression. "Actually I changed my mind, call the nurse. Tell her I fell on my ass. I'll just tell her my best friend _Archibald_ offered to accompany me while I piss - _then_ , maybe I'll let you off the hook for reading my shit."

"Yeah, you do that and after she drugs you again I'll tell her you actually meant to say _Betty_."

"Pretty sure you'll lose both me _and_ Betty as friends if you pulled that," Jughead smirked before turning to start typing away.

Archie followed with a soft closed mouth laugh and let the conversation end. The quiet of the room was sweeping over them again and he couldn't bring himself to disturb it.

They'd been like this before. Ever since Alice Cooper had shown up and Betty had been convinced to head home. (She hadn't actually been convinced. She'd only agreed from what Archie heard from the hall; to go home to shower and change before she was "... _coming right back to the hospital, Mom. If I have to walk that's fine by me_. _I'm staying with Jughead._ ") And since Fred had come back with a bag of stuff, it had been the two of them. The room was without a tv or radio, and Jughead had been without the breath to talk, so Archie had enjoyed the peace and quiet by playing on his newly charged phone while Jughead typed away.

Up until the point Jughead had awkwardly asked for help getting to the bathroom.

Archie grabbed his phone from the side table where he'd left it. The soothing clicks of a keyboard filled the room and even without checking the screen, with the curtains drawn closed over the single room window, he swore he could feel the time. Or at least, he was starting to feel how long they'd been here.

He was definitely feeling it in his back.

"Ugh," Archie groaned, stretching backwards until his neck could crack. "Do you think there'll be school tomorrow?"

"Probably," Jughead answered not turning from his laptop screen. "Doubt Weatherbee will go for two snow days in a row."

Archie dropped his elbows to his knees, and opened his phone.

 _1:18 PM_

It wasn't that he was particularly enjoying sitting in a cramped hospital room for almost seven hours straight, it was just…

He cleared his throat before asking: "They're keeping you here until Saturday, right?" Though he already knew that. He had wandered from Jughead's room early this morning just to arrive at the front desk when the doctor was giving FP and his dad what was apparently his non-negotiable opinion: Jughead would be stuck in the hospital for two days.

"So says the doc," Jughead replied. "At least now I've got the weekend to finish that lab report. Guess you'll have to suffer through science alone tomorrow."

Archie placed his phone back onto the side table.

"Yeah, that is, if I actually go in tomorrow," he said with as much lightness as he could, hoping Jughead would read the air. He did, and stopped mulling over whatever sentence he'd just written to raise his brows and blink before meeting Archie's eyes. The look on his face was holding all the features of annoyance but Archie knew well enough what they were hiding.

Jughead's eyes seemed to be looking for something. "You know you don't have to stay here right?"

Archie felt the ghost of a hand clench around his own and the chill of snow draw across his knees. He looked Jughead dead in the eye and relieved the entire night.

"Yeah, I know."

A noise responded, but Archie opened his mouth again before Jughead could get another thing out.

"And Betty knows too."

Jughead seemed to shrug or shift awkwardly as if he _didn't_ know. Archie almost sighed all the air from his lungs.

"Come on Jug, do you really think Betty's _not_ going to stay? It's Betty. She's probably coming back with a sleeping bag so she can camp out on the floor until Saturday night. We know we don't have to stay."

A pause sat between them. Jughead moved to rub his hand down the left half of his face.

"She really _would_ bring a sleeping bag."

"Yeah, she would." Archie reached across to grasp Jughead's shoulder. A quake ran across it.

 _You know I would too_ , he wanted to say, as Jughead's breath got choppy, and he moved a hand to skim across the bruised patterns of skin along his ribs. _You know how fucking terrified I was, right?_ He wanted to ask, as Jughead's fingers traced around the bandages stuck to his chest.

Instead, the screen of Jughead's laptop turned to black, hiding the work Jughead had done and reminding Archie of the words he almost couldn't believe were there.

 _-waiting for no one to come_

His fingers clenched around the collar of Jughead's unbuttoned hospital shirt while he fought to get his voice beyond a whisper.

"You didn't really think that...did you?"

Jughead seemed to speak over something lodged in his throat. "Think what?"

"That no one was coming."

 _That no one cared._

A choked sound, like a laugh or a cough, echoed around the hospital room. Jughead trembled under his hand. "I can't believe you read my shit, I-" Jughead cracked over the end of what was the closest thing Archie had ever heard of a sob from him. Archie felt his throat close. Jughead shuddered in a short breath. "I don't-" he stopped. "It's-"

Archie couldn't help himself and interrupted: "You've got me. And Betty, and my dad." He could hear the thousands of things he needed to say bouncing around his head, the things that had started the moment he'd run outside in a panic, realizing his best friend was gone. Instead, his mouth held shut and he let his chair break the silence they had been keeping as its legs scratched across the floor, closer to the bed.

With one arm he pulled Jughead towards him.

"I'm sorry, Jug."

Within a second Jughead folded, and an arm was snaking around Archie's back. In the space above his shoulder Archie heard him say: "Me too."

Archie sniffled, his head clunked Jughead's in their hug, and he lost whatever he was going to say.

He settled on, "This sucks," before pulling back in time to see Jughead wipe the heel of his palm across his eyes.

"Yeah, it… does."

Archie rubbed the corner of his cheek, smearing the dampness as Jughead held a frown and shifted focus to the laptop sitting at his legs. Archie found his attention drawn the same way, and he figured, to the same place Jughead was zeroing in on.

The dented, jagged corner of his laptop that had left the top of the laptop screen with a spider web of splintering glass. It was the smoking gun of Jughead's hit and run and the reason Archie had been looking at the laptop to begin with - before being drawn to the opened word document on it - to inspect another piece of damage from the previous night.

He knew they were supposed to feel lucky, or maybe relieved, that Jughead's messenger bag had been found - and he did, he _had felt lucky_. When Fred had walked into the room just after Betty had left, a plastic bag of goods he'd grabbed from a stop at the house in hand - Archie's phone charger obviously included but also clothes and a better pillow for Jughead's neck - it had nearly distracted them from the other bag dangling from his shoulder.

His dad had stopped by the station too.

"I just told your dad," Fred had said, placing the bag onto the bed. "They're being officially charged."

Archie had stared blankly at Jughead, Fred, and the bag, and then the laptop as Jughead had pulled it out. No one had said anything so his dad had continued, hovering closer to Archie's chair.

"Keller's coming by again to officially question you, if you're up for it."

A strange swirling had filled Archie's head and he'd followed Jughead's fingers as they brushed the cracks of his laptop screen.

"Why?" Jughead had asked.

"They found your bag in the trunk of the car," Fred said and Archie felt things fall horribly into place and then out when his father continued. "Or rather, Chuck told Keller they'd hid it in the trunk… after he confessed."

Jughead's head whirled up.

"Confessed…? Chuck- _He did_?" Archie had croaked out while Jughead's mouth had dropped silently. The three of them - him, Jughead, and Betty - they'd all agreed that Chuck and his friend would probably lie to the cops until their faces turned white, or until Coach Clayton bailed them out and FP's call for justice was snuffed out.

But the look that had crossed Fred's face and disappeared into his eyes had that thought dying and still lying at their feet along with the prickling numbness of the entire night.

"Apparently… they thought Jughead was..."

He hadn't finished the thought.

Looking at the damaged laptop now, though, rather than lucky or thankful or relieved, Archie just felt like it was another reminder. Every time Jughead opened his laptop to try and do the thing he loved, he would be reminded of how he'd almost died that night. And how he'd thought he would die _alone_.

Maybe if he wasn't so tired, Archie might've felt sickened with anger again at that thought, or maybe felt pleased to know that Chuck was getting what he deserved with every second he sat in the Riverdale station.

A throat clearing cough pulled him from focusing on the black dented plastic cover. Jughead was staring at him, the slant of his mouth rising.

"Hey," he started and Archie wobbled back and forth in his chair when Jughead gave him a shove at the elbow. "At least...it still works, right?"

Archie raised a brow. "Since when were _you_ the positive one?"

Jughead shrugged leaning into Archie's shoulder. "Since _you_ looked like you were going to cry just from staring at my mac book- which I appreciate. I mean, really, the cracked screen is a _true_ tragedy." His voice rolled lowly, like it usually did when he was finding himself funny. Archie started to feel a smile settling on his face.

"But it's good, my dad, he-" Jughead cleared his throat, "He said he'd cover it."

"Really?"

His mind drifted back to FP who was probably _still_ hunched over the front desk, looking pale - though with less of a tension and fury in his face ever since Fred had come back with the news - as he shifted through the plethora of papers the nurses kept dropping into his lap.

At least one of those papers had to be a bill.

And Archie probably wasn't doing a good job of hiding how his mind was trying to align FP replacing a laptop with hospital bills, a trailer in Sunnyside park, and the fact that it was already agreed that Jughead was still going to be staying with them for the seeable future-

Two knocks saved him from whatever Jughead was starting to say about the look on his face and they pulled slightly apart to turn to the noise. The main hallway door opened and in leaned FP, not fully entering the room beyond putting forward a foot.

"Speak of the devil," Jughead snorted, throwing Archie slightly as he thought it. "Hey, Dad. What's up?"

"Hey," FP replied, his hand pressing against the door frame, he looked to the bedside where the oxygen machine sat. "Shouldn't you be wearin' that?"

Archie straightened, cracking his fingers on the arm of his chair, while Jughead tapped a knuckle to the metal contraption in question. "It was _suggested._ "

"Don't mess around, Jug. Doctor tells you to wear it - then you better." FP stepped further into the room, though made no move to make the final few steps to the bed. "But... you sound better. How's the..." He gestured with a loose hand to Jughead's chest, though with the distance it was like he meant the bed and maybe even Archie's foot included.

"Uh, yeah, it's good," Jughead glanced down to the white patch on his chest, his palm resting over it, like he meant to hide it. A grimace crossed his face when he did.

"' _Good_ ,' huh?" FP turned and looked at _him_ , and any promises between friends were gone as the man looked at him with eyes too clear and too like his own father's.

"He fell in the bathroom," Archie volunteered.

" _Dude!"_

"I never actually agreed to not saying anything about it!"

"You _fell?"_ FP repeated brows shooting up and wrinkling his hairline. He took the remain steps to reach the foot of the bed.

Archie ignored the aura of betrayal coming from the bed. "Don't look at me like that," he said to Jughead's scowl and the words he was mouthing - something along the lines of _not cool_ and _sixty year old nurse._ "He doesn't want the nurse to help him in the bathroom," he explained to FP which earned him a shove from Jughead.

FP's whole face squinted at that. "You serious, Jughead?"

"It's not a big deal, I just don't-"

" _I_ don't care if you're embarrassed. Jesus, I'll hold your ass up if it keeps you from killing yourself!" FP nearly hissed, running a hand down his face and then through his hair. "God, boy."

"It wasn't that bad," Jughead said. Then, turning to Archie, he added in an undertone: " _Thanks_ , man."

"But it was still _bad,"_ Archie answered, ignoring that last part. "You shouldn't risk it, Jug."

Jughead began picking at the tape lining around the gauze on his chest, though his eyes remained locked to FP who pressed the lines of his jaw with two fingers until they met at his chin.

"Should I… do you need something for the pain?" FP asked, the question becoming soft by the end.

Archie was prepared to interrupt Jughead if he refused but he turned to see his friend nod. "...yeah, but maybe you could leave out the whole falling bit."

"I'll leave out the _room_ you fell in. Sorry but, the rest you're not getting out of."

Jughead exhaled half as dramatically as he usually did - though that could have been the recovering lung or the fact that his eyes were shining as if he were thankful for the shutdown.

FP clapped a hand to Jughead's shoulder, moving slightly into Archie's space. "Guess, I'll tell 'em to come back later."

Archie, scooted his chair back, from the bed, keeping his knee from clunking FP's leg.

"Who? Sheriff Keller?" It had been long enough. It figured that the Sheriff was back for Jughead's side of the story. Not that he really needed it now, with Chuck's apparent breakdown.

Jughead shifted back down in the bed, FP's hand following him halfway before he pulled away.

"Yeah, he's here, but he brought along…" FP looked over his shoulder to the door. "I left them waiting at the desk - wasn't sure if you wanted the company, besides Red, here, and well, _Betty_ , obviously," he chuckled at that.

"Wait, brought along who?" Jughead asked.

There may have been a knock of warning but a sudden cheerful answer drowned it out.

"Two of your favorite people of course!" said another voice.

Archie cracked and pulled every inch of his sore neck as it swiveled towards the doorway. Not that he thought much of it when he was met with a glowing smile peeking over a small bundle of flowers. He hadn't even realized he'd shot up and out his chair, but he had, and now he was tripping around it and FP.

"Ronnie? What're you doing here?" Archie could feel his cheeks pinch upwards, the knot in his chest untangle and then twist into something warm.

"Hope we're not interrupting," Veronica said, stepping out of the doorway, letting Kevin appear and slide into the room - half his face eclipsed by a scarf.

"You say that like we weren't listening the entire time," Kevin said with a tug to his scarf.

Veronica moved straight across the room, placing the flowers softly onto the side table by the bed. "These are for you, Jughead," she said, spreading the stems apart. "I know bright, happy, and colorful isn't really your brand, which is why I went with what Betty would like."

"No, it's-" Jughead started, and then cleared his throat. His eyes were glued to the bundle of pink and white daisies - which obviously had Betty in mind, though the plaid printed ribbon and wrapping paper said otherwise. Archie smirked, watching as Jughead noticed the detail, his chin wobbling. "It's… nice, thanks."

Jughead pressed his lips firmly together and the quiet hung for a moment, letting a rap of knuckles on the metal end of the bed interrupt.

FP shoved his hand into his jacket pocket, glancing to Jughead and then at Archie and Veronica until he blinked, focusing back on the entire group. "I'm gonna go see if they'll give you another dose, and maybe bother _your_ old man," he said, turning to Kevin. "Give you guys the chance to catch up, and all that."

"Oh, uh, yeah, thanks, Dad," Jughead replied, sitting up again.

Archie said: "Thanks, Mr. Jones," as the strange tension he hadn't even noticed, began to leave the room, or at least leave Veronica's shoulders, as FP gave a last look and a small shrug of acknowledgment before he left the room. It was just the four of them.

Archie offered his chair to Veronica, which she accepted with a press of her hand to his arm.

"So…" Kevin drawled, pulling over the empty chair that Betty had previously occupied, once he realized everyone was settling in. "I may have gotten the back-cover summary from my dad, but besides your whole broken torso, you don't look too bad for someone who got- am I allowed to say it? Or are we just doing that thing where it festers for all eternity and we never mention it again?"

"It's fine, Kev," Jughead said, pulling his laptop from its spot on the bed and placing it next to the flowers to his right. "Besides, on the list of shit I've dealt with, this doesn't even make the top five. "

"You know, just you saying that makes everything seem _worse_ ," Kevin moaned. "Personally, just hearing that Chuck Clayton almost flattened you - I mean, really, that's the level we're dealing with here - but this makes number three on _my_ list."

Veronica threw a leg over the other and leaned an elbow heavily onto the armrest closest to Jughead. "You know, Jughead, it might be healthy to drop the self-deprecation and sarcasm and just embrace the fact that this is the epitome of one of the worst things that can happen to someone."

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not one to skip a day of dark humor. And trust me: worst things can always happen."

"Well, times are changing," Veronica said, brushing something off the black stocking over her knee. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not one to make a guest appearance at a hospital with flowers for a friend… but then my dad turned my friendship with Ethel into a trainwreck and I ended up with Betty at the reception desk."

Archie grimaced while Veronica kept a straight face. He moved to sit against the side table - careful of the flowers and laptop when both Veronica and Jughead gave him a look.

"Then Kevin calls to tell me that you three were having a 24-hour life crisis, all while we were sleeping in on a snow day," Veronica sighs. "Next thing you know I'm calling our family's florist and sitting in the back of Sheriff Keller's police car - honestly, I'm not sure what is what since I moved here."

"Funny enough," Kevin said, with an almost perfect straight face, "I too have no idea what is what since you moved here."

Jughead let out a breathy sort of laugh. "Guess that's one thing we can agree on."

Archie smiled down at his feet, his ruined converse sneakers an inch away from the shiny black tips of Veronica's heeled boots. His jeans brushed against the white thin blanket of Jughead's bed. "You know, that's probably the one change I'm okay with," he said, and peered up to see a small smile Jughead was fighting to hide.

"Oh!"

Archie turned his head slowly to the door, as a high startled voice joined the mix. He didn't really have to look up to know who it was.

Veronica was already out of the chair and on her feet, almost running to the door.

"B! I cannot believe you!" she chided. "Romeo here goes damsel in distress and not once did you think to call!"

Veronica threw her arms around the shoulders of a backwards moving Betty, seemingly preparing for the impact. A mild look of horror passed through her eyes, but a smile split her face soon after.

"By the way," Veronica added, "don't check your phone, it may crash with the amount of messages I sent."

Betty giggled, wiggling from Veronica's grasp. "Little late for that! But, I think it was all the voicemails Kevin sent me that did it in."

"I was worried!" Kevin protested, standing from the chair to approach the two girls.

Betty shifted her arms and bag of some kind that was against her chest. "I probably should have predicted that one way or another you two would show up."

"Actually, we were just talking about how nothing is predictable in Riverdale anymore - possibly caused by Veronica moving here - so you definitely shouldn't have, Betts," Jughead teased and Archie moved to sit next to Jughead's legs as Betty broke free of Veronica's grip.

"What can I say? I'm an anomaly!" Veronica declared, following Kevin back to his chair on the opposite side of the room.

As Betty came close to the bedside Jughead reached a hand up from the blankets to grasp her fingers as they moved from the bag at her chest, which held a familiar coloring.

"Betty, is that…?" Archie tried, feeling his shoulder loosen with a nostalgic calm as the red and green of the Pop's chock'lit shoppe logo on the white paper bag unraveled from Betty's arms and was dropped onto the bed.

"Yep, it is," she answered, though still looking at Jughead with her hand in his, "I made my mom stop at Pop's on the way back to thank him for everything, and to pick up some lunch. He was really sweet and gave it to me on the house." She looked between the two. "You haven't eaten yet, right?"

"Nope, not since lunch, yesterday," Archie said, realizing an ache was now screaming in his stomach.

"Betty, there is literally no person better than you," Jughead said right as Betty pulled two burgers out and placed them into his hand. "I'm pretty sure they have to make you a saint after this." Archie watched, a chuckle shaking his chest as she then pulled another burger out and placed it into his lap. She peered up to where Kevin was perched on the armrest of his chair, which Veronica was now sitting in. Both of them already absorbed in a separate conversation.

"Kev, V? There's some extra food if you're interested?"

"I'm good, thanks, B," Veronica answered. "Feel free to donate all my helpings to the Jughead fund."

Kevin paused, eyeing the bag, before asking, "Does it make me horrible person if I take some now?"

Betty laughed and stood, bringing the bag to the other side for Kevin to rifle through. Jughead watched until his attention dropped to unwrap one of the burgers in his hand.

Archie held his burger as the laughter of his three friends filled the room, but made no move to unwrap it. Instead, he reached over and put a steady hand on Jughead's ankle as he took the first bite of their hours late dinner.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Wow. As raptorlily said, this feels like an end of an era. My very first multichapter fic every is complete! I hope you all enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think of this final chapter and the story as a whole! Feedback is always appreciated!

And, although Keeping the Old is done I do have two multichapter fics coming soon that you may be interested in (especially you angst fans, I see ya, and I appreciate ya) Here's the ones that'll be coming soon:  
1\. Spider-Jug (aka Jughead is Spider-man, and yes this is 100% self-indulgent)  
2\. An AU I like to call Dead-Jughead (there's a theme here with a word, hyphen, and then Jughead)  
3\. And my already posted road trip fic which I will be continuing soon!

I've also got some new oneshots planned too so stick around if you're interested!

(I'm also on tumblr as createandconstruct - feel free to say hi and ask any fic questions!)


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